State Your Sting
by portoftheartistasayoungc
Summary: When Paige goes to the Midwest to visit her twin brother at college, she has a chance meeting with another student there: Emily Fields. The two are little more than acquaintances at first who run into each other a few times a year, but at some point they'll have to admit to the connection they both feel between them. College AU.
1. Chapter 1: The Bloody Coaster

Chapter One: The Bloody Coaster

Paige shivered. She had been in such a rush that morning, so worried that she was going to miss her flight that she had run out of her dorm room at Stanford without grabbing a jacket. Maybe it was fine to run around without a jacket in California, but now she was sitting in Chicago's Union Station, shivering and thinking longingly of the jacket draped on the back of her desk chair.

She had flown into Midway around 11 am and taken a cab from there to Union Station. Her parents were paying for the trip and they were fairly well off. Still, Paige would rather have saved some money and figured out the L. But once she realized how cold she was going to be and admitted to herself how tired she was, she bit the bullet and hailed a cab.

Tuck would make fun of her when (if) she told him. He had always been better at navigation. When they went on road trips together he held the map and she drove. She pumped the gas and he bought the snacks. She picked out the music and he sang. Sometimes, and their mother agreed, it seemed like all the traits of a well adjusted human being had been divided between them in the womb. They had always been the most confident and successful when they were together. There was a quiet reassurance that seemed to pass between the two of them like a slipstream. Paige knew she would always have someone on her side. There were definitely downsides to have a twin (the matching outfits when they were kids, for one) but for the most part Paige liked being a twin and she loved her brother.

She smiled when she realized she would be seeing Tuck in just over four hours. Then she frowned again because she knew Tuck would make fun of her for forgetting her jacket. He wouldn't have forgotten his jacket. And he would have reminded her to grab her's as well. It was times like this that affirmed for Paige that they'd made the right decision when they chose to go to different schools for college. They weren't kids anymore. They needed to learn to live less co-dependently.

Paige mentally shook herself as she caught herself thinking in plural again.

"'I', not 'we,'" she muttered under her breath.

That was another downside of being a twin— figuring out who you were without the other one around. She knew not all twins were like this. She'd met some who were fiercely independent. But that wasn't the case with her and Tuck. They had adored each other from the start and it never stopped. She felt more at ease, more fun and confident when she was with him. Paige was pretty sure that other people even liked her more when she was with Tuck.

She shook herself again, trying to get rid of her insecurities. Her entire first year at Stanford she had avoided telling anyone that she had a twin. Her friends knew about Tuck, of course, but she just said "brother" when she talked about him. Some people had figured it out, seeing photos of she and Tuck together, but by that time "twin" was not the first thing they associated Paige with, which had been her aim.

At Stanford she had successfully become Paige, who just happened to have a twin brother, and not one half of the McCullers twins. Some of the kids in high school had actually called them McTwins or just PT. They were not worth nicknaming individually, apparently.

None of this had ever seemed to bother Tuck. He missed Paige, of course, but he didn't rely on her the way she relied on him. He had always been more sure of himself than Paige and he transitioned into singular living much easier than she had.

Still, they had their "twin things." He always seemed to call just when Paige was picking up her cell phone to call him. They could sort of feel how the other had done on a test without having to tell each other their results out loud. And earlier that month, Tuck had talked their parents into getting Paige the plane tickets to visit him for the 20th birthday, which was what she was planning on asking her parents for.

Paige suspected that part of the reason it had been easier for Tuck to set out on his own was that he was gay.

It was not a memory that Paige was proud of and she frowned as she picked up her bag and made her way out to the train tracks, stopping briefly to show a conductor her ticket and climb up the stairs and into the train to find her seat (still shivering).

Four years ago, Tuck had called a family meeting, which was, in and of itself, weird. They weren't a "family meeting" type of family. Paige felt terrified sitting with her parents on the living room couch while Tuck had paced in front of them all, sweating and cracking his knuckles (both tell-tale nervous Tuck behavior). She was on the wrong side of the equation. She and Tuck always told each other things before they told their parents.

Five minutes later, she had been on the verge of throwing a coaster at him just to get him to say something when their father had finally cleared his throat and said, "What's this all about, son?"

Tuck had stopped mid-pace, still in profile to them all, and with out turning, dropped his tensed up shoulders in a defeated sort of gesture, exhaled and said, quite clearly, "I'm gay."

The chaos that had followed this pronouncement was still a bit of a blur to Paige. Their father had started to yell things like, "This isn't how we raised you" and "I will not allow this" and their mother had sat in a stunned silence until she had to jump up from the couch to stop Tuck from leaving, after which, she focused on trying to calm their father down.

Paige, on the other hand, had felt the edges of herself going black with anger. Her eyes were slipping into some sort of tunnel vision and she was very aware of her heart, which felt like it was burning and pumping lava into her limbs instead of blood. Maybe she had done it because she had felt like doing it only a few moments before, but, Paige watched, a bystander to her own anger, as her hand reached out and grabbed one of the white and grey marble coasters her mother had gotten from her sister for Christmas, and threw it directly at Tuck.

Maybe if Tuck had been the one of them to get the athletic genes, he would have had a chance at dodging the thin rock Paige had just sent flying at him. But he hadn't. Which meant that Paige had. Which also meant that Paige was very athletic and good at throwing things. Both of things these facts came together quite literally, as the coaster connected with the side of Tuck's head.

The shouting had stopped immediately. Tuck had grabbed the side of his head and blood had begun to trickle out from between his fingers. Paige had stood up without meaning to when she'd thrown the coaster and now the twins were staring at each other eye to eye across the room. For the first time in either of their lives, they had looked into each other's faces and seen nothing but betrayal staring back at them.

Paige had run out of the house and then out to the tree house she and Tuck had built with their father the summer they were ten. From there she had watched as her parents and Tuck, with a towel pressed against his head, all got in the car and drove away, Paige had assumed, to the hospital.

Sometime later, Paige was never sure how long it had been, she'd gone back into the house, grabbed a sleeping bag, her pillow, and the bloody coaster from where it had been left on the living room floor, and returned to the tree house.

Paige didn't like to remember this, but she forced herself to sometimes. Her mother had called Paige her "little glutton," as in a glutton for punishment, because as a kid, when she had broken a rule or lied to her parents, she would often confess by way of informing her parents that she had grounded herself for a month. Maybe it was the fact that her father was a pastor, but Paige had always had the strongest moral compass of any of her peers. She had an inherent sense of justice, too, and never shied away from doling it out, even to herself, if need be. She had the sort of terrifying qualities that one imagines a martyr must possess in the moments just before death.

Paige was happy to find that she'd gotten a backward facing seat on the Amtrak train that was about to start its southwestern journey down through Illinois. In the midst of that terrible memory, it reminded her of riding in the hatchback of her family's old station wagon. Sitting in the back, facing the wrong way, had always given Tuck carsickness, but Paige loved it. Much like the coaster incident, Paige experienced her own life like it was a rerun on TV. Things happened to her and then she reviewed the contents sometime later.

It hadn't been until the next day, when Tuck, with ten stitches on the left side of his head, had come out to talk to her that she really understood why she had thrown a coaster at her brother's head.

Tuck had slowly climbed up the ladder that was nailed to the tree trunk until just his head was poking up through the hole in the tree house floor.

"We need to talk, Paige," he'd said.

"No shit," had been Paige's tactful reply. Still, Tuck knew his sister and he knew that when she was like this, it was as good a response as he could hope for. He took this curt response as a pleasant invitation to join her and climbed all the way into the tree house.

He'd sat down across from Paige so that the entrance hole was between them.

"Good thinking," she'd quipped, slowly spinning the coaster in her fingers and not looking up at her brother. "If I lunge at you, I'll probably just fall out."

"You never think, do you?" He'd wasted no time getting to the point. He was madder than Paige had ever seen him.

"Just because I'm impulsive that doesn't mean I don't think," Paige replied defensively. "At least I'm not as selfish as you are. All you ever think about is yourself!"

"What the hell, Paige?! I expected this from Mom and Dad, but not you. I mean, I knew Dad would flip a shit about me being gay, but you? I guess we know who got the bigot genes between us now don't we?"

As he'd said this, he'd moved to crawl back over to the entrance, to leave, but had stopped when he saw Paige's face. She'd gone white as a sheet. Her eyes were wide and rapidly filling with tears.

"What?" she had whispered. "No. I don't care that you're gay."

Tuck had looked at Paige for a long moment, looking at the truth of this statement, feeling it, with the same look on his face, Paige had realized, as when he jumped into the cold water of a swimming pool. And then he had laughed, the most relieved laugh Paige had ever heard; one trumpet-like blast and the walls between them fell. Tuck had rolled onto his back beside the hole and tears had begun to slide down the sides of his face.

"Then what?" he had asked.

"How could you not tell me?" Paige choked out, anger in evident in every word. "I felt like a chump sitting there with Mom and Dad. How could you keep something like this from me?"

Paige was crying by that time, too. He'd moved next to her then, sat right beside her. That alone had been enough for Paige to know that, despite how angry they both were at each other, they would be alright again, eventually. Then he'd turned his head and looked at her.

"I'm _sorry_," he'd said, his voice sinking like a wet grave on the second word. "But this isn't something we can share."

Paige had felt like she had when her Mom had told them their beagle, Duke, had died at the vet's when they were on vacation and she'd been unable to remember if she had said goodbye to him before they'd left.

"Shit. We have to go talk to Mom and Dad," Tuck had interrupted the desperate search that was going on in her mind. "Dad is about to call the police to have you arrested for a hate crime and Mom seems to think you've exiled yourself for good this time. I forgive you, by the way." Tuck had always been the bigger person.

"I am sorry," Paige had said solemnly, "but really, a hate crime? Nice to know you all think so highly of me." Paige had been dreading the conversation she would have to have with her parents. She was going to have to ground herself for a long time for this one.

"It looked pretty bad. Mom made up a story in the ER about it being some sort of Frisbee accident."

They'd both laughed at this, but it was a dry, hollow laugh.

"I am going to have to call you Paige Hate Crime McCullers from now on, though."

"That's really not funny," Paige had said seriously.

"It's not supposed to be," Tuck had replied.

Then scenery quickly turned from city to the slow roll of the Midwest prairie, the train moved toward Solomon, as Paige remembered all of this. Tuck had been true to his word, sort of. He did call her H.C. sometimes, but never jokingly. It was only when that blinding rage was threatening to take hold of her that Tuck called her this, when her body was about to betray her.

The day after they'd had that conversation in the tree house, Paige had joined the swim team. She wanted to prove to Tuck and her self that she could live her own life, too, and do something that he couldn't be a part of. But Paige kept the coaster. She put it into the box under her bed with the other holy relics of her life and she'd sworn that she would never let herself be that monster again.


	2. Chapter 2: The Log

Emily groaned. She reached over to the plastic storage container she was currently using as a nightstand and turned off her alarm without opening her eyes. _I hate math, _she thought. _ I hate math, _she thought again. When she finally did open her eyes, the view was exactly the same: pitch black. This always scared her a little. Not because she was afraid of the dark but because it reminded her of _The Pit and the Pendulum. I hate math, _she thought again.

She stood up and clicked on her lamp, which was so blindingly bright in her basement bedroom that she threw her arm up to cover her eyes and accidently knocked herself back onto the bed. It was quite a fall. Her mattress was on the floor.

Once she made it back up again, she quickly began to grab clothes from around the room, smelling each one until she found a clean shirt and a passable pair of jeans. She grabbed her messenger bag and headed out for her math class. She would just have to get breakfast after class was over.

The utter darkness of her basement bedroom was just about the only thing she didn't like about it. Emily had lived in the dorms her freshman year at Vallance, and while she had gotten along fine with her roommate, Stephanie, a math wiz, soccer player from Kansas, she hadn't really liked the dorm style living. The mass shared bathroom, the cookie cutter rooms, the constant weekend sexile she'd had to endure whenever Stephanie hooked up with some guy she'd met and want some privacy with him in their room. And the whole thing was overpriced, honestly.

Emily had become very close to three girls at Vallance when she'd started working in the theatre scene shop building sets. She made many friends, of course, but the four of them had formed a sort of unit that felt more and more like family with each passing day. Eden, Charlotte, and Jo had become almost as close to her as her three best friends from high school—Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. Emily had a feeling that by the time she graduated from Vallance, these six girls would be the friendships she would carry with her wherever she went.

So, as their freshman year had been drawing to a close, she and her three college friends had decided to see if they could find a house near campus to rent together. They had located one almost immediately; an overlooked smallish house about 2 blocks away from campus.

It was easy to see _why_ it had been overlooked. The entire outside of the house was covered in an ugly wooden clapboard siding. It had the appearance of an overgrown wooden children's toy block, with its straight front, back and sides. There was no porch, but it did have a sittable roof that was reachable from two of the upstairs windows.

The inside was better. Downstairs it had a big living room, small dining room, and a gross but cleanable kitchen. It even had a full bathroom with a shower. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a bathroom had been squeezed in at the top of a thin, narrow-stepped staircase (which each girl had managed to fall down by the end of September).

The landlord was a sweet, older Hispanic man named Horace who had rented the house to them for $500 a month and gave Emily permission to fix up the dark, musty basement into a fourth bedroom. Emily and Eden had decided to stay in Solomon over the summer to do the fix-up necessary on the house before the next school year began.

It had been a joyous summer. That was the only word Emily could use to describe it. Idyllic and swelteringly hot and loose as the days slipped by. She and Eden had secured positions at Vallance's fitness center. It didn't pay much, but they got by and usually had enough at the end of the day to buy a few bottles of Arbor Mist from the gas station convenience store down the street. The cashier there was famous around campus for "forgetting" to card students. After the sun set, they would climb out on to the roof and drink right from the bottle while the heat slowly seeped out of the shingles underneath them.

Spencer and Aria had come and stayed for almost the entirety of June. The three of them had discovered the best Mexican restaurant downtown. They'd spent long afternoons wandering in the local boutiques and picking the perfect colors to paint various rooms of the house. Sometimes they would stay up all night to paint because it was so much cooler working at night. The house felt like a different animal then, with every window thrown open and the moths lazily circling the floodlights they had borrowed from the scene shop. It was in those hours that Emily truly fell in love with the house. As shabby as it was, it was also beautiful, especially when she had her best friends next to her, singing stupid Taylor Swift songs at the top of their lungs. Emily had a framed picture of Spencer and Aria that she'd taken after one such all-nighter. The two of them were fast asleep in the middle of the kitchen floor, flecked and smudged everywhere with red paint and wearing matching blue jean overalls they'd bought at a thrift store just for the occasion, Aria's head resting on Spencer's legs. A few tears had leaked from Emily's eyes the day Spence and Aria had left, driving back to Rosewood in Spencer's silver SUV.

But then Hanna and her boyfriend, Caleb had surprised her, showing up just over a week later the day before Independence Day with enough booze and fireworks for a small army. They had done the holiday as only Hanna could. She'd decorated the entire house within two hours of her arrival and made up a batch of her famous sangria, to boot.

The next day had passed in a literal haze of smoke as the three of them and Eden spent the entire day grilling hamburgers, drinking, and shooting off firecrackers on the driveway. Caleb had taken a nap to sober up and then driven everyone to one of the dirt roads outside of town as the sun was setting. It had taken almost half an hour but they finally located the area where many of the small town's citizens had gathered to watch the fireworks display. They parked along the side of the road and stood at the edge of the field with everyone else just talking and watching the fireflies blinking around them until the show had started. And for a town whose population was only about 30,00, it wasn't half bad. Emily was enjoying this small town Midwestern life more than she ever thought she would. And when they'd returned to the house, to end the night, a spectacularly drunk Hanna had insisted on choreographing a "sparkler dance" and ended up burning her arm during the performance.

Hanna and Caleb had stayed for two weeks. Jo and Charlie had mailed some money to Emily and Eden for furniture buying, so the four of them had made it their mission to complete the living room and dining room while they had Caleb and Hanna around to help with the heavy lifting.

Eden, the only actress of Emily's three housemates, and Hanna got along well and they spearheaded the interior decorating mission with a vengeance. They'd tried the thrift stores around town first, but their furniture stock was rather low. At the local Big Lots they'd found a soft, brown, faux-leather sectional that Hanna exclaimed would look amazing with the golden yellow Aria had found to paint the living room. It was on clearance and the last one in stock, but the catch was they had to take it by the end of the day and there was no delivery available. After a quick meeting to decide what to do, Caleb and Emily headed out to rent a U-haul for the afternoon and Eden and Hanna had gone to work picking out the rest of the furniture.

$600 and five hours later, the four of them were collapsed, sweaty and gross, on the new sectional in the living room, arguing over who should cook dinner. Emily lost and made due with what she could find in the pantry. The friends had feasted on banana pancakes, pizza rolls, and stale Doritos that night. Emily suspected that she would remember the meal for her entire life as one of the most satisfying she had ever eaten. They had stuffed their faces by candlelight around the new dining room table.

By the time Caleb and Hanna had set off for Rosewood again, the house was starting to feel like a real home and Hanna had even christened it with a name. Because all the girls living in the house were involved in theatre and because of that awful wooden siding all over the outside she had dubbed it The Monologue Cabin. Once classes had started back up in the fall and all the students had returned, the name had worked its way around campus. Most people just called it The Log for short, though.

Emily hated math for a reason. She was dreadful at it, but she needed to get her math credit out of the way if she wanted to graduate. She had enrolled in the lowest level course Vallance offered in the subject, Mathematical Ideas (lovingly dubbed Math for Rocks by the students) and prepared for the worst.

This particular morning, like most, Emily was struggling to stay awake and distractedly jotting down poems in her notebook instead of taking notes on—

she lifted her head and listened to the professor for a moment—

estimation. The professor, in Emily's opinion, looked like a female Hobbit, and while she didn't dislike the teacher, she felt no warmth toward her either. Her lack of positive feelings on the class was due more to the fact that it was at 8 am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday rather than the professor herself.

But Emily was in a bit of a mood today. _I estimate, _she wrote in the margin of her paper, _one large rock thrown at the professor's head would kill her. _And put me out of my misery, Emily thought.

When class ended Emily threw her books in her bag and took off for the cafeteria. She and the girls split meals pretty evenly between cooking them at home and eating the school food. On her way to the caf she stopped in the mailroom, which was in the same building, since she hadn't checked her box in a few days. As soon as she finished dialing in her combo and opened the box however, she regretted it.

One thin, white envelope stamped with the school seal and "Vallance College Business Office" had been all she needed to know what it was: her third, and final, the letter informed her, notice requesting she pay her remaining tuition for the year. If they did not receive the money by the end of the month, she would not be allowed to continue with her classes. Suddenly Emily didn't feel so hungry. She stuffed the letter in her bag and walked back to The Log slowly.

Emily's father was in the army and her mother worked as well, but they were by no means rich. Her parents had told her that if she chose to go to Vallance that they would only be able to cover half of the $37,000 a year tuition. She would have to get grants, scholarships, and loans to cover the rest. Emily had considered going somewhere cheaper, but she had her heart set on the little liberal arts college with the amazing English department. Her first year had gone by well. She filed her FAFSA and qualified for enough grants and federal loans to cover her half of the tuition. But this year, Vallance had raised the tuition by $5,000 and Emily was scrambling to find a way to pay this extra amount. She had finally decided to apply for a private loan, but the process was long. Emily had no credit history so she'd had to ask her grandparents to co-sign for her. She was still waiting on the final YES or NO from Sallie Mae.

When Emily got home she still felt a little green around the gills from worry, but she knew she should eat, so she headed back towards the kitchen. She walked in and saw Jo leaning against the counter, eating an apple.

"Are you okay," she asked, noticing Emily's face. Jo was a little shorter than Emily with short, strawberry-blonde hair that was shaved on one side of her head. She had an openness about her that Emily found refreshing and eyes that seemed to change color depending on the color of her shirt and the mood she was in. She was the first close lesbian friend that Emily had ever had. All the lesbians Emily met in high school had been so few and far between she had immediately seen them as a possible dating option. But at Vallance, the dating pool was so much larger that she didn't have that issue anymore. It was so nice having someone she could relate to in that way without the pressure of someday the two of them becoming an item.

"Oh sure," Emily had replied sarcastically. "Vallance is just trying to kick me out still," she said grabbing a rather forlorn looking granola bar from her near empty shelf in the cabinet they used as a pantry.

"You still haven't heard back about your loan?" Jo asked with worry in her voice as well.

"Nope. If I don't pay by the end of the month, I can't keep going to my classes." Emily had just finished answering when Eden bustled into the kitchen.

"Good morning, ladies!" She exclaimed loudly as she opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Naked juice. Then she spotted Emily's face. "What's wrong?!" she shouted at Emily. This was Eden's normal volume, most likely a result of years of being told to project by directors of the plays she'd acted in.

"Emily's sad," Jo replied. She figured Emily didn't want to talk about it, especially when Eden was in such a sunny mood.

"Do you want me to sing for you?" Eden liked to lift crestfallen spirits with rousing songs like _Battle Hymn of the Republic_.

"No, Eden, thanks," Emily replied quickly. She couldn't help but smile a little, too.

"You're coming tonight though, right? To the show? It's my debut as a dancer!"

"Of course. I'll be there," Emily assured her friend. "I wouldn't miss it."

The mainstage this weekend was the semi-annual dance show that the Vallance Dance Department put on, aptly named MOVEMENT! Eden had gotten involved in the theatre department as a freshman, but this would be her first foray into the world of dance and Emily was excited to see the results.

"Okay, good! See you tonight then," Eden said, pecking both her friends on the cheek, after which she headed for the door. They could just hear her starting to sing the opening notes of _Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart_ as she closed the door behind her.

"Hurrican Eden," Jo said chuckling as she finished her apple. "Hey, you wanna watch last night's Grey's episode with me this afternoon?"

"Sure. I finish work at 4, but the dance show's not til 7 so we should have time," Emily answered.

"Cool. I'll see if Charlie wants to join us. We'll have to head over before you, though," Jo said about their other housemate, Charlotte, whom everyone called Charlie.

"Why?"

"I'm working the box office tonight and Charlie's running crew," Jo clarified.

"Oh, okay." Emily loved building sets in the scene shop for the theatre, but that's as involved in the department as she got, unlike the other three girls.

"Don't you have Econ in like 20 minutes?" Emily asked glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall. "Where's Charlie?" She and Jo had the class together, thankfully, otherwise, Emily suspected, Charlie would never make it out of bed in time. Charlie was the true night owl of the house. Emily sometimes heard her fixing the food at 2 or 3 am because the basement door was located only a few feet away from the stove.

"I'm going to make a wild guess and say: bed. I gotta go get that girl UP," Jo said leaving the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway to the dining room, though and said, "I'm sure you'll hear about the loan soon. It'll be alright Em."

"Thank you, Joanna," Emily smiled at her friend's grimace when she used her whole name. "I'll see you around 4. Bring chocolate!" Emily threw over her shoulder as she headed down into the basement.


	3. Chapter 3: Before the Lights Go Down

Paige jerked awake when the conductor leaned over her to fold her ticket upward in the slot he had stuck it in above her seat when she had boarded.

"We'll be in Solomon in about 15 minutes," he announced loudly. It seemed like most of the people in the seats surrounding Paige had the same destination. She looked out the window. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Fields of crops were passing slowly by in the window, punctuated only by a road every now ad then and a lonely farmhouse.

She still couldn't understand why Tuck had chosen to go to Vallance College when their parents had told both of them that they would pay for whatever college or university that they chose. But they had to choose. Not going, according to their father, was not an option for his children. This conversation had happened before Paige had received the full ride swimming scholarship to Stanford. Because of this, her parents had much less of a financial burden on their shoulders. She was glad for that. She didn't like to think she and Tuck were a burden. Sending your child to college was expensive enough, but two at the same time? Just trying to do the math in her head of what tuition could have been for she and Tuck combined made her feel a little nauseated. Had she not gotten the scholarship, Paige knew she would have chosen a much less prestigious and expensive school to attend.

Tuck had been taking dance classes for as long as Paige could remember. In high school he had begun to really take it seriously. He was easily the best dancer in their school and Paige had expected him to apply to Juilliard or The New York School of Dance, something on the East Coast, at least. However, the only colleges he had applied to were small liberal arts colleges, most of them in towns Paige had never heard of. When Tuck had been accepted to Vallance, he and their mother had gone to Illinois for a campus visit while Paige and her father had flown to Stanford for a tour of the campus and swimming facilities. When they'd both returned home, Tuck was beaming.

"Vallance is it, Paige," he'd told her excitedly. "It's exactly what I was looking for. I can totally picture myself there."

Paige was happy for him, but knew that come the fall, they would be entering two completely different worlds.

Paige felt he train slow down and noticed that there were buildings beginning to pass by the windows now. She saw a church with a tall steeple and what looked like a John Deere store that had more tractors, mowers, and various farm equipment surrounding it than Paige had ever seen. She was too busy grabbing her bags and checking around her seat to be sure she hadn't forgotten anything to see much else. When she was certain she had everything, she went down the steps in the middle of the car that led to the door. She was the first down, but a line quickly formed behind her of others who were getting off in Solomon, too.

As soon as the train came to a full stop, the conductor opened the door and placed a yellow stool on the ground for passengers to use as a step. Paige eagerly climbed out of the train and began walking towards the tiny station look for Tuck. She heard him before she saw him.

"Paigey!" he yelled, waving his arms.

She finally spotted him. His hair was longer than he'd ever had it, in an off center part that covered his ears, and he'd grown a light beard and mustache.

"Shit, Tuck," she'd said as she reached him and hugged him hard. "You look like a lumberjack."

He laughed loudly.

"I'll take that as a compliment. You look cold. Where the hell is your jacket?"

"I, uh, may have forgotten it in my dorm," Paige said.

"As always, you are woefully unprepared for anything," he said teasing her, as she'd known he would.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have needed one if you'd moved somewhere more sensible."

"You act like we didn't grow up in Philadelphia and you've never been cold before. California is making you soft, P. Come on," he added grabbing her duffel bag out of her hands. "We'll go to the campus bookstore and you can buy an official Vallance sweatshirt to keep you warm!" He was grinning like an idiot as the two started walking toward the street.

"I'll wear it everywhere I go!" Paige teased him back. She always felt like whatever mood Tuck was in was infectious. It felt so good to just be around him again.

"I hope you don't mind a little walk. Campus isn't far at all. Just a few blocks up and few over," he told her gesturing.

"Are you kidding? I'm practically a professional athlete, Theodore," Paige said in a fake highbrow tone they used with each other sometimes, cocking her eyebrow at him.

"God I missed you," he said, smiling, and after a pause, "so what do you think of the town?"

"It's definitely quiet…and wholesome. Very American." She was trying not to judge the place too quickly, but it was hard. There weren't many people or cars around and the scenery looked like it wouldn't have been out of place in a Norman Rockwell painting.

"It'll grow on you, I know it will. By the time you have to leave you'll already be planning your next trip to come see me," he told her confidently.

As they drew closer to the campus they talked about Tuck's classes and the dances he would be in that night. It was just after 4 pm so they'd have just enough time to drop her things in his dorm room, buy her a sweatshirt, and grab some dinner before he had to be in the theater to get ready for the show.

A couple blocks from campus, Paige noticed a girl with black hair turning up a sidewalk in front of a strange wooden house. Paige watched her take keys out of her pocket, unlock the door, and disappear inside.

"That's the ugliest house I've ever seen," she told Tuck.

He laughed appreciatively. "Yeah, it's pretty bad. Maybe it's better on the inside?" he told her shrugging. "It's called The Log. A group of theatre girls live there. One of them is in a dance with me tonight."

Paige hoped, for those girls' sake, that it was better on the inside.

Charlie and Jo had left for the theater about 15 minutes ago. Emily was still sitting in the living room on the couch with her laptop on her legs, scrolling mindlessly through her Facebook. She glanced at the time, closed the computer, and headed downstairs to change. Earlier that day, before work, she had been able to get some laundry done, so she had a much larger selection of clothes to pick from than when she'd woken up that morning. She decided on a pair of light wash jeans and a purple top that fell off one shoulder over a black tank top. There was no reason to get dressed up for the show, but she wanted to look good just in case.

After making sure all the lights in the house were out (they'd racked up a pretty horrendous electric bill last month), Emily set out across the campus to the Lincoln Performing Arts Center where the theater was located.

Jo was sitting behind the plate glass of the box when she walked up to get her ticket.

"Hey, this really cute girl just bought a ticket. She wasn't _my_ type, but I think you might be into her," she told Emily as she bought her ticket. "She asked me if there was anything to do around here to kill time so I told her about the art installation downstairs. You should go check her out." Jo looked at her with her eyebrows raised expectantly.

"I don't really feel like it tonight," she told Jo. She was still too worried about her loan coming through. "Thanks for thinking of me, though."

Jo winked at her and made a funny face. "Enjoy the show, then!"

Emily could tell she was trying to cheer her up and take her mind off the loan. She was thankful she had such wonderful friends here. Emily quickly spotted Charlie at on of the entrances to the theater and walked over to her.

Charlie was sexy. There was no other word for it. She just had this quality about her, a sort of confident ease that made guys loose it over her. It didn't hurt either that she had a great body from playing basketball and doing construction work and carrying objects and set pieces on and off the stage in her spare time. She had long brown hair that always looked like she'd just had sex.

"I thought you were running crew tonight?" Emily said to her.

"They were short an usher so I volunteered," Charlie told her, running her fingers through her hair, "which is lucky for you, because that means you get a super hot lady to escort you to your seat."

"There's not even assigned seating. You're being ridiculous," Emily told her friend, but slipped her hand into the crook of the arm Charlie had held out to her, anyway.

"Well, now if I don't make the cut for bridesmaid in your wedding, you'll already know what a competent usher I am."

"Oh shut up," Emily said laughing as Charlie stopped about 10 rows from the stage on the right wing of seats.

"Here you are ma'am. I'd sit near the aisle in case of a fire if I were you," Charlie delivered in a very serious tone.

"Very comforting, " Emily replied, laughing, and sat one seat in from the aisle so that Charlie could sit down with her for a few minutes before people really started arriving.

The girls chatted for a while about the episode of Grey's Anatomy they had just watched (Charlie thought Patrick Dempsey looked like a drowned rat) until Charlie had to get back to ushering in earnest.

"See you after," she said to Emily as she headed back up to the doors.

Emily sat and perused the program as the theater slowly started to fill up around her. It was 10 minutes to 7 and nearly every seat had been taken when someone finally sat down in the seat Charlie had vacated. It was a girl. Emily could sense that before she even looked up. And she smelled new, somehow. It reminded Emily of freshly printed paper—warm and sort of inky. She looked up, curiously.

The girl was looking around the theater with a bemused expression on her face and wearing a very vibrant purple and white Vallance sweatshirt. Her hair was a dark auburn brown and her face looked both hard and soft at the same time.

"Jesus," she was mumbling to herself. "What are all these people doing here?"

Emily narrowed her eyes at this girl and tilted her head a little to the side and asked, "Are you lost?"

The girl turned then and looked at her for the first time. She was so pretty that Emily lost her train of thought for a few seconds.

"What?" the girl was asking her.

"Did you buy a ticket?" Emily questioned her.

"No," the girl replied sarcastically. "I just wandered in off the street."

Emily was taken aback by her biting tone. "Sorry," she told her. "You just seemed really confused."

"No. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude," the girl backtracked quickly. "I guess I just didn't expect this to be so packed and I get sort of nervous in new places."

Emily continued to study the girl next to her. "Your sweatshirt is pretty misleading then," Emily said looking at the girl's bold clothing.

"Oh. I forgot I was wearing this," the girl said, smoothing her new sweatshirt down nervously.

Emily inadvertently titled her head the other way as she watched the girl run her hands down over her breasts and stomach.

"I guess I look kind of stupid," the girl continued.

Emily refocused, snapping her eyes back up to the girl's face. "No, you look great," Emily said without thinking and putting maybe a little too much emphasis on the word "great."

"Uh…so you don't go here?" she said quickly, hoping the question would distract the girl from Emily blatantly ogling her body.

"No, I'm just here visiting my brother. He's dancing tonight," the girl said pointing at the stage and then as she noticed she was pointing at the stage got an expression on her face that clearly told Emily she had just realized how unnecessary her gesture was. The girl's head dipped down embarrassedly and she put her hands back in her lap. Emily thought she was adorable.

"I just bought this sweatshirt today," she finished telling Emily quietly. Emily got the impression she was making the girl nervous and she sort of liked it. It only seemed fair when there was a flock of butterflies fluttering around in her own stomach.

"I'm Emily," she said, holding her hand out to the girl, praying her palms weren't too sweaty.

The girl smiled at her then, really smiled, for the first time and Emily felt a smile spreading across her face as well.

"My name is Paige," she said and put her hand into Emily's.

"It's very nice to meet you," Emily said as an excuse to prolong the hand shaking. Unfortunately, after that, there was nothing to do but stop shaking hands. Paige looked away again.

"The dance shows are a big deal around here," Emily said, picking the conversation back up. She didn't want to stop talking to Paige yet. "Vallanace has a really strong dance program. Your brother must be really talented if he's in the show tonight."

"He is," Paige nodded proudly. "He's one of the featured dancers, actually. He said his picture was in the program," Paige grabbed the program off her lap as she said this and began flipping through the pages to the center of the booklet where six dancers' headshots and a short bio appeared. "There he is," she said pointing to one of the boys. Emily leaned forward to look where Paige was pointing next to the name _Theodore McCullers_. "That's Tuck."

"He's cute," Emily said smiling. "I'll watch for him."

"Well don't get any ideas, he's gay," Paige blurted out. She grimaced. She hadn't meant to say that. It came out more from nerves than actual intention. Emily was having a strange effect on her.

"That's okay," Emily replied a little puzzled by this pronouncement. "So am I."

Paige gulped. Rather dramatically.

"Oh, that's cool," she said, looking at Emily with a nervous smile faltering on her face and in a slightly higher voice than she had been speaking in previously. But she was staring Emily directly in the eye. She didn't even break the eye contact as she cleared her throat. Emily thought vaguely of a line from one of her favorite books.

_the world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice_

"Yeah, I think it's pretty neat," Emily said, finally, in what could only be described as a suggestive tone, her eyes never leaving Paige's.

And that was when the lights dropped.

**Note: The quote Emily thinks of at the end of this chapter is from Anne Carson's book The Autobiography of Red.**


	4. Chapter 4: The Dance

Paige had no idea what was happening to her. Her heart was racing and her stomach was churning. She felt hot, like her new sweatshirt was choking her. The symptoms reminded her of the Christmas she was nine and she'd eaten about 50 cookies and then Tuck had made her laugh and she'd puked all over the tree.

When the lights dropped she grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and started to pull it over her head. She needed air. But somewhere in her armpit and neck region it got caught and she started to panic. Before she could freak out too much though, she felt hands yanking the garment over her head. As she came free, Emily handed the balled up sweatshirt to her. Paige knew that this was the moment in the story that she would puke. Having the sweatshirt off, though, was cooling her down quickly and, thankfully, she was able to keep it together.

As the music started playing through the theater, Paige did her best to focus on the dancers and not on the fact that she had almost just melted and suffocated in front of this pretty girl. The thought caught her off guard. She glanced quickly at Emily. _I guess she is pretty, _Paige admitted to herself as she looked at Emily's long dark hair and light brown skin. She was breathtaking, actually, with the delicate light of the stage falling over her face, chest, and shoulders like a dusting of powder. Paige thought fleetingly of the chalk that gymnasts would dip their hands and feet in before climbing onto the balance beam. She wanted to dip her hands in whatever it was that seemed to have settled on Emily. She needed to get a grip.

Paige focused back on the stage then and only risked glancing over at Emily when Tuck wasn't on stage. As perplexing as she found this girl, Paige was there to support her brother. And with that in mind, she gave him her full attention on the stage, but she could feel Emily's eyes on her every once in awhile. She seemed to have reached a heightened state of awareness, but only concerning these two people. She felt invaded.

Six dances later, the lights came up again.

"Is it over?" Paige wondered aloud.

"It's just intermission," Emily told her.

"Right. Halftime," Paige clarified for herself. "Intermission" was one of those words that always got stuck on the tip of her tongue.

"Sorry to keep bothering you," Paige said turning to Emily again (_am I sorry? _Paige wondered), "but could you tell me where the bathroom is?"

"It's not a bother," Emily answered. "I was just about to go as well. I can show you."

Paige and Emily moved to the aisle and walked slowly toward the exit along with about half of the audience. As they finally reached the back of the auditorium, Emily saw Charlie who was stationed at the doors again. Charlie looked Paige up and down and sent Emily a sly smile and slight nod. Emily rolled her eyes back, but felt herself blushing a little as well. Luckily, because of her complexion, people usually couldn't tell when she was blushing.

Finally the pair made their way down to the bathroom, but there was quite a line formed already. They fell in behind the other women, Paige standing behind Emily. They hadn't spoken since leaving their seats. It was starting to get awkward.

"So, you and Tuck," Emily said turning around to face Paige, "you're twins aren't you?"

Paige looked at her with an impressed sort of crooked smile gracing her face.

"Yeah, how did you know?" Paige and Tuck looked related, sure, but they were by no means identical. And now that they'd reached adulthood, most people couldn't tell they were twins.

"I don't know…there was just something about the way you were watching him, like you were up there with him. Like the dance was coming out of your eyes and being projected on to the stage," Emily said, shaking her head slightly. "That sounds kind of weird but that's the only way I can describe it."

"You were right, so I guess it's not that weird," Paige told her.

They had moved just inside the door of the bathroom now. Most of the women behind them seemed to have decided to hold it or find another bathroom somewhere.

"What about you, do you have any siblings?" Paige asked.

"Nope. I'm an only child," Emily answered. "It was kind of lonely growing up. But in high school and here, too, I've sort of formed a family out of my friends."

"It can be lonely, too, being a twin," Paige told her honestly. She had no idea why she was opening up to Emily like this. "I never really learned how to make friends because I always had Tuck."

At that moment, a little girl had thrown open the door forcefully and unexpectedly and it knocked Paige forward into Emily. Her left hand had instinctually gone to the wall above Emily's head to steady herself, but her right hand had somehow landed on Emily's hip and their faces were only inches apart. Rather than break them out of the intimate space they had entered in their conversation, as Emily expected it to, it seemed to sink them deeper into it.

"See? I have to depend on wayward children hitting me with doors to get close to people." Paige smiled and pushed herself back away from Emily again; her eyes sizzling like a lit firecracker.

It was Emily's turn to feel nervous now. Having Paige pressed up against her, even for those few seconds, had sent her into a mental tailspin.

"You were doing fine before that little girl bulldozed in here," she told Paige shyly as she turned to head into the cubicle that had just opened up. "I'll see you back in the theater," Emily said as she shut the door.

Emily spent the entire second half of the dance show wracking her brain for some way to keep talking to Paige afterward. But she couldn't really think of anything. They were just two strangers that happened to sit next to each other in a theater. When the lights came back up again, Paige would go meet back up with her brother and Emily would return to The Log with her friends to celebrate Eden's first dance performance. She thought of asking Paige and Tuck to join her and the girls but she didn't want to intrude on their time together. She didn't want to seem creepy or pushy or desperate. She didn't even know if Paige was gay. And with these thoughts spiraling through her mind, Emily grew more and more somber as the show got closer to ending. She wanted to drink Paige. To chug her or sip her or gulp her in. Emily didn't care. She had to know her and she didn't care the speed or route of that knowing. She felt desperate. Emily had never felt such an immediate connection to someone. How could they just walk away from each other after this?

Despite all these feelings, it all still happened exactly as Emily didn't want it to. The last dance finished, the audience clapped for the last time, and the house lights came back up. With a despondent heart, Emily watched Paige stand up and tell her, "It was really nice to meet you."

Emily thought Paige may have hesitated. It was an almost imperceptible movement, like a kid playing _Mother May I? _But whether Paige's body was asking permission to stay or permission to go, Emily couldn't tell.

So she just said, "Yeah, you too," and helplessly watched as Paige left the auditorium.


	5. Chapter 5: Three Halves or Two Thirds?

It was a few minutes before Emily finally stood up to leave. As she moved toward the aisle, she felt something bumping against her feet. She looked down. It was Paige's sweatshirt lying on the floor, forgotten. Joy flared into Emily's heart. She grabbed the purple shirt off the ground, still inside out from when Paige had removed it, and sprinted out of the theater.

She saw Charlie and Jo standing near the wall, waiting for her, but didn't care. She was scanning the crowd still ambling around out of the theater for any sign of Paige or her brother. Jo and Charlie had walked over to her now. They were trying to talk to her, but she wasn't listening.

"Charlie," Emily said in a rush without looking at her, "that girl I was with earlier, did you see her leave? Did you see which way she went?"

"Um, yeah. She headed that way," Charlie answered, pointing towards the gallery on the other side of the building. "What's going on, Em?"

But Emily didn't stay to answer. She took off as fast as she could, weaving through the slowly thinning crowd, her eyes sweeping for Paige as she went. Finally, at the very end of the building, behind a sculpture that involved a great deal of chicken wire and torn cloth, Emily saw them.

Paige seemed to be attempting to reenact a moment of one of Tuck's dances she had liked and Tuck was laughing loudly at her antics. Emily marched up to them and Paige, seeing her, immediately stopped her silly dancing.

"Emily," she said, startled by her reappearance.

"You forgot your sweatshirt," Emily told her breathlessly, holding the thing out to her.

"Oh, thanks," Paige replied, grinning sheepishly.

Tuck looked between the two girls and decided he should remind them they weren't alone. They were just staring at each other now, both of them holding the sweatshirt loosely.

"Jeez, P," Tuck said, "you are determined to freeze to death this weekend, aren't you?" This seemed to snap the girls back to reality.

"Tuck, this is Emily," Paige told him, finally pulling the sweatshirt out of Emily's hands. "We sat next to each other during the show."

"Hello, Emily," Tuck said, sticking his hand out to her, "I'm Theo. Paige is really the only person that calls me Tuck."

"You were great tonight," Emily told him as she shook his hand.

"Oh, thank you," Tuck said grinning. "So, I know we've just met, Emily, but I'm hoping you could do me a favor," he continued. "The choreographer and director want to talk to all the dancers and go over some notes about the show tonight. Would you mind keeping Paige company for about an hour while I do that? I know how she seems," he went on in a mock whisper, "but really, she's harmless."

Emily laughed as Paige backhanded her brother in the arm. "I'd be happy to," Emily said genuinely.

As Tuck walked away, Emily sent her friends a text telling them not to wait for her and Paige pulled the sweatshirt back over her head.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" Emily asked, sliding her phone back into her pocket. "The campus is really pretty at night."

"Sure," Paige told her. "Let's do it." She was smiling broadly, happy to have an excuse to spend more time with Emily.

They walked out together into the crisp autumn air. They followed one of the sidewalks meandering away from the building in silence for a while. It was Paige who finally spoke.

"I was really impressed by you earlier," she said, "picking up on Tuck and I being twins."

"I probably wouldn't have noticed," Emily replied, brushing off the compliment, "but I've been thinking about twins lately, anyway."

"Go on…"Paige said gently. "Why have you been thinking about twins?"

"Well," Emily looked over at Paige before continuing, "have you ever read Plato's Symposium?"

Paige shook her head in answer.

"I'm not trying to be highbrow," Emily went on apologetically. She didn't want come off as some literature snob. "It was assigned in one of my classes…"

"That's okay," Paige told her. "Is it about twins?"

"No. It's about Love, actually."

"It's about _Love, Actually? _The movie?" Paige was teasing her now (flirting, Emily hoped) and she had the cutest smile.

"Nooooo," Emily giggled. "It's about Love. It's all these old Greek guys arguing about what Love is."

"That sounds interesting."

"It is!" Emily was getting excited now, obviously she had found this story fascinating, and Paige had to admit she found Emily's enthusiasm endearing. "Well, one of the guys tells the others that when human beings were first created, we were all paired up, sort of glued back to back. Some people were man/man, some were man/woman, and some were woman/woman," Emily glanced at Paige as she said this last part but couldn't read the answer she was looking for in Paige's expression one way or the other. "So everyone had four arms and four legs and two faces. And we all just sort of cartwheeled around everywhere."

Paige's laugh was quickly becoming one of Emily's favorite sounds. "But the gods thought we were becoming too powerful or something," Emily kept explaining, "and split everyone apart, to how we are now—two legs, two arms. And that's what Love is. It's the search for our other half. To find what was ripped away from us and become whole, round people again."

"I think I see where you're going with this now," Paige encouraged her.

"It made me wonder about twins, I guess. I mean, do you think Tuck is your other half, or do you think it's…someone else?" Emily stopped abruptly as she said this and turned to face Paige.

Paige stopped, too, tucked her hands in to her hoodie pocket and leaned her head back as she thought. She was quiet for a few long moments as she considered the question.

"Well, to be honest," she finally answered, "it's hard for me to imagine ever being as close to someone else as I am to Tuck. I mean, up until last year, we did pretty much everything together. I've been struggling lately, to remind myself that I'm a whole person without him, actually. I think I'm still trying to figure out what I believe Love is, romantically. "

Emily was drinking it all in, every word Paige was saying. This was what she had been craving. Paige went on.

"But I do believe that unless we can all figure out how to exist, first, as complete people on our own, we'll never be a good partner in Love. I see what you're saying, though. So to answer your question, using this analogy, I guess I think there can be three halves or that Tuck and I are two-thirds of something," Paige dipped her head in that adorable way again. "I just mean, that I think when I find the person I'm supposed to be with, they won't be threatened by my relationship with Tuck because they'll understand that it's different, a different kind of love. They won't see it as a competition."

"That was really beautifully said Paige," Emily told her as they started walking back towards the theater building. Paige was surprising Emily now, in the best way.

"Thanks," Paige said. "I think you bring out a poetic side of me. Or maybe it's this place," she continued, looking around at the muffled lamp posts dotted around campus, the old, towering trees, and the dark, quiet buildings hovering like monoliths at the edges.

"Well, I am studying Literature, and I love poetry," Emily told Paige. "But I think Vallance brings out my poetic side, too. "

"Do you write poetry?" Paige asked her.

"Sometimes. I try."

"I bet it's beautiful. You seem like you have a unique perspective on things. Maybe I can read something you've written sometime?' Paige had never in her life felt as comfortable talking to someone like this, other than Tuck.

Emily stopped again. They were back outside the theater again. She knew they were about to say goodbye to each other, truly this time. But she felt none of the panic she had earlier. There was a calm that had settled like a blanket over her entire body in the past hour that she couldn't explain.

"You know," she told Paige, her heart smoldering peacefully in her chest, "I think you will read my poetry someday. I feel sure that we're going to see each other again."

Paige nodded, their eyes locked again. "I think so, too" she told her. "Goodbye, for now, Emily."

"Goodbye, Paige McCullers." Emily turned and walked back out into the dark campus, the name burning like a fresh tattoo on her tongue.

As she walked home, she thought about a lot of things, but what stuck her most was how _full _she felt, how satisfied. It was the first time that simply talking to someone else had had this effect on Emily. And she was reminded again, of a line from a book that she hadn't understood the first time she read it, but now the meaning seemed to be approaching her through the fog, becoming clearer and sharper the further she walked.

_What is the conversation of lovers? Compared with ordinary talk, it is as bread to stones. _

**Note: The quote Emily thinks of at this end of this chapter is from Anne Carson's essay The Anthropology of Water in her book Plainwater.**


	6. Chapter 6: Months Pass and Photographs

Paige and Emily did not see each other again before Paige left to go back to Stanford on Monday afternoon. Emily finally heard back about her loan that Monday, as well, and was able to breathe a little easier. Her friends had teased her about how smitten she had seemed with Paige on Friday, but it didn't last long after she told them that Paige had only been visiting and Emily didn't even know where she lived.

Indeed, in the 6 months that passed before Paige and Emily saw each other again, Paige rarely thought of Emily, at least at first. Paige had found the whole encounter rather unnerving and pushed it to the back of her mind. She threw herself into swimming even more than usual because she found that unless she went to sleep completely exhausted, she dreamed about her body being pressed up against Emily the way she had been those moments during intermission in the bathroom. Whatever her body was trying to tell her, Paige wasn't ready to hear it, so she swam it into submission and found that it often drug her mind down into silence with it.

In November, Emily went back to Rosewood and spent Thanksgiving with Hanna, Spencer and Aria since her mother had gone to Texas to be with her father at the army base he was stationed at. She joined her parents in Texas for a week during Christmas and spent the rest of her break in Solomon rereading her worn copies of Harry Potter for the hundredth time and stock piling her energy for the coming term. She thought about Paige more often than she liked to admit.

Paige returned to Philadelphia for the holidays. She and Tuck visited their Grandma Hazel almost every day. They put Christmas lights on the tree house and had a Full House marathon by accident. And there were always the many church services she and Tuck were expected to attend around the holidays as the pastor's children. Although Paige was still figuring out what it was that she believed and how that differed from her parents' views, she found comfort in the familiarity of the tradition. The candlelight Christmas Eve service her father did had always taken her breath away with its beauty and she knew it wouldn't feel like Christmas without it.

Emily spent most of January eating clementines and writing poems about amputees. She was taking her first poetry workshop and the winter seemed different because of it, somehow deeper. The colder it got, the further Emily burrowed into the words that lay thick on her mind. She and the girls would walk to class in pairs with their arms linked as a way of steadying themselves on the ice that had coated the campus, shuffling along with their heads bowed low against the biting wind. They all developed a liking for brandy in the evenings; they would sit under electric blankets on the sectional at night, sipping the warming liquid and doing their homework, wishing the house was either better insulated or that they had endless amounts of money for the heating bill.

Then in February the sky had broken open and the whole town was covered in two feet of snow. Something about the blanket like snow had made the cold seem more bearable and Emily and the girls, on their way home from the scene shop one night, had stopped to have an impromptu snowball fight. Tuck had been wandering around campus that night, too, taking pictures of the new snow to send to Paige in sunny California. He knew that, despite her whining during the fall, she was missing the changing seasons while at Stanford. He spotted Emily and her friends running around under one of the lampposts by the student union and snapped a couple pictures of them mid-snowball fight. He sent the best one he had captured (Emily was dodging a snowball, her eyes squeezed shut with laughter) along with about a dozen others he had taken of the snow-covered campus to Paige in an email. Paige was surprised when she opened the picture and saw Emily's face, but brushed it off as a coincidence. But she printed the picture of Emily and her friends out and taped it on the wall next to her bed. She told herself she did it because she missed the snow.

In March, Tuck was cast in his first acting role at Vallance and he called Paige to tell her the news.

"Hey, T, what's up?" Paige had to call him back because she'd been in practice when he called originally.

"Paigey, I got cast!" he'd already told her he was planning to audition.

"Congratulations! I knew you'd get in."

"You did not," Tuck told her. "I've never really acted before outside of class," he said, referring to the Beginning Acting class he'd been in the previous fall.

"I did know, actually," Paige corrected him, "because I would never in a million years be cast in a play, which means that you got the acting genes."

"Can't argue with science, I guess," Tuck conceded. Paige could hear him laughing on the other end of the phone. "We're opening on the last weekend in April. Can you come? You have to come, Paige. I'm going to see if Mom and Dad will come, too."

Truthfully, the prospect of their parents being at Vallance while she was there didn't appeal to her much. Paige loved her parents and she would be happy to see them, but she knew if they were there she'd be stuck doing family things all weekend long and she wouldn't have a chance to, well…

"Of course I'll be there," Paige responded before she let her thoughts get carried away.

"You're the best, P. I gotta go, though. I've got a hot date tonight I've got to get ready for!" Tuck couldn't help telling her this news as well.

"Oh really? Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do," Paige told her brother.

"Well, that kind of limits my options, Paige," Tuck teased and then added, "Love you, bye!" and hung up before Paige could defend herself. She huffed as she hung up the phone and glanced at the picture on her wall as she threw her bag down on her bed.

On the other side of Vallance's campus, Eden had just burst through the front door of The Log and proclaimed to whoever was in hearing distance, "Guess who just got the lead in Eurydice?"

"Hmm," Charlie and Emily were sitting on the couch together doing some homework, and Charlie was bored and in the mood to annoy Eden. "From what I saw of the auditions yesterday, I'm coming to guess…Erica Lindon? She was on point."

Emily smirked and covered her face with her book. She didn't want to be the target of Eden's wrath, or even collateral damage.

"You're a jackass, you know that Charlotte?" Eden did not take her acting career, as she called it, lightly.

"I know," Charlie smirked, "but it's the only way I can get you to call me by my full name, and its so sexy when you do that, Edie. Come to bed with me." Charlie held her hand out to Eden.

Emily couldn't help laughing at this.

"Don't encourage her, Emily," Eden said.

"I'm sorry," Emily told her, fighting back a smile. "Congratulations, Eden. Who else is going to be in it?"

Charlotte had gotten off the couch by this point and was giving Eden a bear hug that Eden was fighting to get free of and pretending not to enjoy.

"Let's see," Eden's voice came out from Charlie's shoulder region a little muffled. "Jack is playing my father. Lucy, Esther and…geez, Charlotte, let me go! Thank you. Lucy, Esther, and Chloe are the chorus," Eden stopped to think for a moment. "Oh, and that dancer, Theo McCullers, he got cast as Orpheus, actually. I can't remember the others."

THUNK.

Emily had dropped her very large and very heavy French book onto the ground.

"Shit," she said, obviously flustered, as she uncurled her legs from beneath her to get up and retrieve it. "When did he start acting?" Emily asked trying to sound casual but failing.

"Um. Now, I guess. This is his first play as far as I know," Eden was staring at Emily with a quizzical look on her face, her eyes narrowed as she took off her coat and tied her curly, black hair back in a bun. "Are you okay, Em? You look…"

"Yeah..." Emily interrupted. "I think I just…have low blood sugar." Emily finished lamely.

"Let's make dinner then!" Eden said loudly as she left the room, obliviously. Charlie stayed where she was, though, hands in her pockets and looked at Emily knowingly.

"Still got the hots for his sister, huh?" she asked Emily.

"Jesus, why do you remember everything?" Emily said hurrying past Charlie to help Eden with dinner, slightly embarrassed at her own transparency.

"It's a gift and curse," she heard Charlie say in response behind her.

Emily couldn't remember ever, in her life, a month and a half going by more slowly. Even Hanna coming to spend spring break with her and the two of them driving up to Chicago for a few days didn't make the time go faster. The possibility that she might be seeing Paige again seemed to be stretching the days to a nearly unbearable length. More than anything, it was the not knowing if Paige would come to see the play or not that was driving her crazy. She didn't even know enough about the girl, like how far she would have to travel or what her schedule might be, to make an educated guess.

The only solace came to Emily one night when she was lying in bed, reading a few pages in her _Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson_ before she went to sleep. She was flipping through the pages, having decided to read a few at random, when the first line caught her eye,

_If you were coming in the fall,  
I'd brush the numbers by  
With half a smile and half a spurn,  
As housewives do a fly._

_If I could see you in a year,  
I'd wind the months in balls,  
And put them each in separate drawers,  
For fear their numbers fuse._

_If only centuries delayed,  
I'd count them on my hand,  
Subtracting till my fingers dropped  
Into Van Diemen's land._

_But now, all ignorant of length  
Of time's uncertain wing,  
It goads me, like the goblin bee,  
That will not state its sting._

She didn't know as she read it that first time, though it gave her such relief to see her feelings described so beautifully, that it was something she would return to many times during her friendship with Paige McCullers. But she did realize in that first reading that she wasn't alone. She and Emily Dickinson were linked through the years by more than just a shared name now. As Emily laid the book aside on her makeshift nightstand and clicked off her lamp, she sent a small thank you to the long dead poet, and fell asleep more quickly than she had in three weeks.

Paige, 2,000 miles away, was dealing with the impending meet, which she _knew_ was coming, in the opposite fashion of Emily. She pretended it wasn't happening. She barely acknowledged her father's email with her flight confirmation. She almost hung up on her Mom when she called to tell her that she and her father were renting a car in Chicago and they would pick her up at O'Hare and drive down to Solomon the following Friday afternoon. It was stupid, Paige kept telling herself, to be nervous about seeing someone whose last name she didn't even know.

Finally, on Thursday night at 11:30 pm, she gave in to the nervous excitement she had been fighting and packed for her trip. She was about to close her suitcase when she decided to add one more item to it: the purple Vallance sweatshirt that had been so instrumental in she and Emily's first meeting.


	7. Chapter 7: Round Two

It was noon, Friday. The opening night for _Eurydice_ had finally arrived. It was a good thing, too, because Emily couldn't handle not knowing anymore. She was pacing back and forth in front of her bed, staring at two different outfits she'd laid out. She was leaning towards the grey pants and striped v-neck sweater, but she just couldn't decide. She needed a second opinion.

Emily hurried up the stairs and into the living room where her three housemates were lounging on the couch and watching an episode of Friends while they ate lunch. She stood in the doorway and considered each of them, trying to decide whose opinion she should get. She wasn't even trying to play it cool anymore.

"What's up, Em?" Charlie asked looking over at her.

Emily didn't answer Charlie's question because she'd finally decided.

"Jo, will you help me?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, sure," Jo replied putting her sandwich down on the coffee table.

"In my room," Emily clarified and took off downstairs again, trusting that Jo would follow.

"No offense, Em," Jo said as she descended the basement stairs, "but you seem kind of…manic. Are you okay?"

"I don't even know," Emily admitted. "I mean, I feel like I'm going crazy. Is she going to be there or not? I don't know! I'll find out in a few hours though, so either way…" Emily rambled.

Jo moved forward and grabbed Emily, who had resumed her pacing, by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. "What in the hell are you even talking about?"

"Paige McCullers," Emily said simply.

"That girl you met _once_, last fall?" Jo asked. "I didn't even know you were in contact with her. "

"I'm not! That's the point. So I don't know if she's coming tonight."

"Why are you so concerned about someone you barely know? You have to calm down," Jo told her.

"I just have this feeling about her. We have a connection. It's hard to explain," Emily said. Finally talking about it with someone was doing wonders, though. Emily felt herself starting to relax.

Jo looked at her, as if she was trying to decide something, and after a few moments, said, "Okay. I'll help you, but only if you maintain a resting heart rate."

Emily laughed and said, "I'm calming down, I promise. Okay, which of these outfits do you like better? And by that I mean, as a lesbian, which one would make you want to jump my bones?"

Later that evening, in the grey pants and orange and purple sweater, Emily, Charlie and Jo were walking in a group towards the Lincoln Center. They were talking and laughing with each other. Emily was grateful that, tonight, her two friends weren't working on the show. She had a feeling she was going to need some support tonight, one way or another.

The play tonight, _Eurydice, _was not being performed on the main stage, but in a smaller black box space referred to as Studio Theater. The plays done here were always very different because the space could be designed however the director desired, including the seating for the audience. Everything about this space was more intimate, too. The seats were minimal, there was no actual raised stage area, just open floor, and the actors were only a few feet away from the audience most of the time. For _Eurydice, _Emily knew because she had helped build the bleachers, the audience would be sitting on either side of the performing space, which was the middle third of the room, on six tiered bleachers with folding chairs. The actors would be between them, so that if an audience member looked directly across from them, they would be looking into the audience on the opposite side, like a mirror image. This was a bold move, in Emily's opinion, because it risked the attention of the audience in a way that didn't normally factor in to a performance. It also caged the actors in between them. It would either work immensely or fail dismally. Emily loved theatre for that exact reason. It was risky. She strongly believed that the best plays always fucked a person up a little. She knew whether a play failed or succeeded by how she felt afterward. Emily had left all of her favorite plays feeling like she'd just been in a bar fight with someone she'd been making out with in the bathroom moments before they'd started throwing punches. She was hoping this would be the case tonight. The story of Oedipus and Eurydice was one of her favorite Greek myths and she hoped the play would do it justice.

Emily tried her best to keep her thoughts on the play she would be seeing rather than the girl she might be seeing. The closer she and her friends drew to the theater, though, the more her thoughts drifted to the girl. As they walked into the large room that served as a lobby for Studio Theater, Emily glanced around for someone standing on their own, but everyone seemed to be standing in groups of threes or fours. Her heart fell a little. Paige wasn't coming. She wasn't there. Emily turned to face her friends, effectively turning her back to the room. The three of them had been chatting for a few minutes when Jo nudged Emily's shoulder, nodded toward the other end of the room, and said, "Em, is that her?"

Emily was scared to turn around for some reason. She was afraid that it _would _be Paige and afraid that it _wouldn't_. Afraid of what each of these things would mean. But her body was itching to spin around and check. Her mind and her body came to a compromise and Emily glanced, in what she hoped was a casual manner, over her shoulder. She looked around the room, but she didn't see Paige.

"Where?" she asked Jo turning back around.

"Ooh, I see her," Charlie cut in. "Damn, she looks good. I think she dressed up for you, Em."

Emily turned her head the other way, but she still couldn't see this girl her friends had so easily spotted.

"Guys, where?" Emily was getting slightly annoyed.

"Here," Charlie said, "switch places with me." And she grabbed Emily roughly and spun both of them around so that Emily was suddenly seeing the room properly.

Jo saw on her face that she still hadn't located Paige, so she leaned toward Emily and said, "See that middle-aged couple right in front of the doors? She's standing behind them. Wait for them to shift a little and you'll see her."

Emily spotted the couple and held her breath, waiting and hoping that one of them would just _move _a little. Then the man turned towards whom Emily assumed was his wife and Emily saw her. It was Paige, leaning casually against the wall chatting with the couple. She was wearing boots, skinny jeans, and a leather jacket. Charlie was right. She looked hot. Her hair was a little longer than in the autumn. She looked more toned, too, and her jaw seemed more defined. It suddenly occurred to Emily, as she took in the scene before her, who the middle-aged couple must be: Paige and Tuck's parents. Emily couldn't help feeling a little disappointed that she couldn't invite Paige to join her and the girls.

Paige was, indeed, standing with her parents at that moment, using all of her mental power try to focus on what her mother was telling her about her Aunt Kay and Uncle Russ and the 30th wedding anniversary party her parents had attended for them the week before, when all she wanted to do was look over to where she'd seen Emily walk in with her friends.

Not long after Emily finally caught that glimpse of Paige, the house manager opened the doors to let everyone into the theater. Paige lost track of Emily as she and her parents got their programs and picked out their seats. It was still about 15 minutes before the play would begin and Paige realized, with a lurch in her stomach region, that because of the way the bleachers were set up, she and Emily would be able to see each other if Emily sat on the other side. She still didn't know what it was exactly, but this was it. Round Two, Paige thought to herself.

"Sweetheart?" her mother was asking her a question that she hadn't heard over her own thoughts.

"Sorry, what did you say, Mom?"

"Is this where the dance show was that you saw Theo in?" Paige's mother asked again.

"Oh, no, it was upstairs on the main stage. You know, the traditional theater," Paige said.

Her mother nodded at her.

"I was in a play, once," her father said unexpectedly.

"Really? When?" This surprised Paige. Her father was not really dramatic. He could deliver a spirited sermon, but Paige couldn't even imagine him agreeing to put on a costume. "You remember, Anne? With the football team?" he said to his wife.

"It was more of a skit, Nick," she replied, and then, for Paige's benefit said, "It was at a pep rally senior year of high school. Your father played the executioner."

Paige burst out laughing. "What? Who did you kill, Dad?"

"Just a turkey. It was Thanksgiving."

Paige continued chuckling, picturing her father pretending to chop off the head of someone dressed as a turkey, and turned forward in her seat. She flipped through her program for a few minutes and then looked up. Sitting directly opposite her on the other set of bleachers was Emily, unabashedly looking at Paige. Paige was sure she had been watching the whole interaction she had just had with her parents. Emily was smiling at her, like she had just been waiting for her to look up. Paige felt heat rush into every inch of her body. Emily mouthed, "Hi," to her as she and Paige locked eyes. Paige gave her a small wave in return.

For the second time since they had met, as Paige and Emily stared at each other, the lights in the theater dropped.

But this time, when the stage lights came up, they were still staring at each other.


	8. Chapter 8: Don't Look Back

Emily settled in for the play, with the hope that she might get to talk to Paige for a few minutes during intermission.

Paige looked like she had during the dance show; extremely focused whenever Tuck was on stage and mildly interested when he wasn't. It was during these latter times that she would catch Paige looking across the room at her.

After this happened a couple times, Emily caught Paige's gaze and then looked pointedly at actors, as if to say, "Why aren't you paying attention?" And Paige did a sort of wonky grimace and shrugged her shoulders to say, "Oops, sorry!" But continued looking at Emily anyway until both girls were grinning.

When the lights came up for intermission, Emily watched as Paige's parents got up and walked out of the theater. Paige, however, stayed where she was and glanced over at Emily. Emily lost no time. She excused herself from her friends and headed over to Paige on the other set of bleachers.

"Hey, stranger," Emily said smiling as she sat down, "where have you been?" she asked jokingly.

Paige laughed. "California, mostly." She answered Emily's question seriously.

"Ah, I've been wondering. You never did tell me where you went to school."

"Well, I like to be a little mysterious," Paige grinned. "I go to Stanford, actually."

"Wow! Very nice. Why Stanford?"

"They offered me a swimming scholarship I couldn't turn down," Paige replied.

"Oh, you're a swimmer. That's explains your physique, then," Emily said. Paige blushed at this. Emily was openly flirting with her now; she couldn't help herself. She'd been waiting six months to be able to flirt with Paige.

Paige tried to recover her previous swagger. "Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal," she said making a smarmy face, which made Emily laugh.

"So, are those your parents?" Emily continued asking all the questions that had been running through her head during the play.

"You are just full of questions tonight," Paige chuckled.

"Sorry," Emily told her, "I guess I am kind of drilling you."

"That's alright. You can question me. I don't mind. Yes, those would be my parents, Nick and Anne McCullers," Paige answered and then asked what she had been wondering. "Are you enjoying the play? You've probably seen more plays than I have so I figured I should get your opinion."

"I'm really enjoying it. I have a good view," Emily slipped this remark in casually and continued. "Tuck is doing a good job. And that's my housemate, Eden, playing Eurydice. They have nice chemistry together."

"Oh, really? And here I thought you'd just come to the play to see me," Paige said and wondered, _Am I flirting with her? _as she said it.

Emily wasn't sure either, but she felt emboldened by this remark from Paige and the way Paige had been subtly glancing at her outfit during their conversation, so she plowed on before she could lose her nerve.

"You're probably busy later," Emily began, "with your family, but if you and Tuck are free tonight, my friends and I are going to this frat party at the TKE house…"

Paige hadn't been expecting this and it made her feel flustered.

"Um, I don't really know what Tuck had planned for tonight. He's got this new boyfriend he wants me to meet so we'll probably be hanging out with him," Paige told Emily, noticing her face falling slightly at what she was saying. "I'll mention it to him, though. Maybe we'll see you there," Paige added.

"Yeah, sounds good," Emily said, but she had a feeling Paige was letting her down easy. _I guess she wasn't flirting with me, _Emily thought. "Anyway, I should get back to my friends and I'm sure your parents will be back in soon," Emily said standing up. But she couldn't help adding, "It was really good seeing you again, Paige." She wondered if the truth and sadness of this statement was as audible to Paige as it had been to her own ears.

She wasn't sure why she did it, maybe because she _could_ hear all of that in Emily's voice, but Paige stood up suddenly and gave Emily a very awkward hug. Emily was so caught off guard that she just stood there, looking surprised with her arms hanging at her sides.

"It was good to see you, too, Emily," Paige said very cordially. And then, "I like your outfit. Okay, then, bye," all in one rushed breath.

"Bye," Emily replied with her eyebrows creased in confusion and feeling rather shell shocked as she walked back to Jo and Charlie on the other side of the room.

When Emily returned to her seat, Jo and Charlie were both wearing expressions of confusion. They'd obviously been watching her interaction with Paige.

"How'd it go?" Jo asked.

"And what the fuck was that hug?" Charlie added.

"It was fine until I invited her to go to the party with us tonight," Emily said as they moved back in their seats to let her pass by on the way to her own. "And then it got awkward and she said she was busy and well, you saw the hug."

When Emily sat down, she noticed that Paige was sitting slumped over with her face in her hands.

"Sorry, Em," Jo said sympathetically.

"I think you killed her," Charlie laughed, looking at Paige's current posture. "She collapsed when you left."

After the play ended, Emily, Jo, and Charlie waited in the lobby for Eden to come out and they all rushed her for a group hug when she appeared, still in her thick layers of stage makeup.

"Edie, you were fantastic!" Jo told her.

"Seriously, you were," Emily agreed.

"You put Meryl Streep to shame. I was totally turned on," Charlie told her.

"Thank you, ladies," Eden replied to them all, beaming. "You're too good to me!"

"I hope you aren't too tired to go out now, because girl, I am going to show you a good time," Charlie told Eden.

"And I think Emily needs a drink," Jo said as Paige and her family passed by the group on their way and Emily gave them a forlorn look.

"We'll tell you while you take your makeup off," Jo said in reply to Eden's questioning look as they all headed back into the green room.

"Alright," Anne was saying to her children after Tuck had received congratulations all around, "we'll see you two at the restaurant for brunch tomorrow. You sure you don't want to stay at the hotel with us tonight, sweetheart?"

They were standing in the parking lot outside of the rental car.

"No, I'll just stay with Tuck in the dorms tonight, Mom," Paige assured her.

"You kids have a good night," Nick said, and with a knowing look at them both, added, "And make good choices." He knew that his children always got into a lot more trouble when they were together than they ever managed when they were apart.

Tuck and Paige both smiled. Something had drastically changed in their father the day Paige had thrown the coaster at Tuck. Nick seemed to realize, as the doctor had stitched up his son's head, what was really important to him in regards to his children. As it turned out, sexuality wasn't one of those things. Rather than grill them about their grades and doing more extracurricular activities, he told them he was proud of them more often, came home every night for dinner, and took them out on the weekends to see movies and play miniature golf, the way he had when they were little.

"It was a horrible thing to do," Paige's mother had told her in confidence one afternoon," but I think when you threw that coaster at you brother, it knocked some sense into your father."

After their parents had left for the hotel, Tuck had turned to Paige, waggling his eyebrows at her and said, "I hope you're ready to dance!"

"I thought we were meeting up with Carlos tonight?" Paige said. Carlos was the guy Tuck had been seeing for the past month and a half.

"We are," Tuck said, grabbing Paige by the arm, and dragging her off toward his dorm building, "but we aren't just going to sit around and stare at each other. There's a party on campus tonight and Carlos really wants to go check it out. I thought it would be fun."

"It isn't at the TKE house by any chance, is it?" Paige asked with a sinking feeling. She was horribly embarrassed by the weird hug she'd given Emily and the prospect of seeing her again so soon made her want to crawl into a hole and hide.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Emily mentioned it to me," Paige told him.

"When did you talk to Emily?" Tuck asked.

"During intermission."

"It didn't take you two long to run into each other," Tuck noted.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Paige said defensively.

"Nothing. Sorry," Tuck responded, thrown off by the harsh tone in her voice. "You okay, Paige?" he added.

"I'm fine," Paige said, not sounding like she was at all.

"Please don't be surly when you meet Carlos," Tuck said, pleading with her. "I really want him to like you…not be scared by you."

Paige shot him a look that clearly said, _Fuck you._

Tuck sighed. This wasn't going well. "What's wrong? I don't even know why you got upset in the first place," Tuck tried reasoning with Paige.

Paige, however, had no desire to tell Tuck what a fool she'd made of herself, so she just said, "It's nothing. Let's just drop it," and looking over at Tuck added, "I will be nice to your boyfriend."

"Thank you, Paigey," Tuck said smiling. "And you're okay with going to the frat party?"

"Sure," Paige told him, hoping that it would be a big enough party that she wouldn't run into Emily.


	9. Chapter 9: Dirty Dancing

Emily wasted no time. As soon as she and the girls walked in the door of The Log, she headed straight for the fridge, grabbing some pineapple juice, strawberry margarita mix, and off the top of the fridge, rum and the very last of a bottle of Wild Turkey and placing them on the counter.

"Em…honey," Eden was standing behind her looking nervously at all the things Emily had just gathered, "just…go slow, okay?"

"Yeah! Em, let's do this!" Charlie had just come in and quickly located a large plastic pitcher. "Oh man, once I'm done with this," she said about the drink she was starting to mix at the counter, "you are not even going to remember this night."

"Come on, Edie," Jo said as she came in carrying some empty Nalgene water bottles, "we're in college. What's wrong with getting a little sloshed on a Friday night?"

"Well, first of all," Eden said to Jo, "I think 'sloshed' and 'a little' contradict each other. And second, can we please just stick together tonight? Last time we did this, you," she pointed to Charlie, "wandered off and fell asleep in the park. You," she turned to Jo, "ended up having a very unsafe threesome with that chick from Dining Services and that townie. And Em, you nearly fell off the roof!"

"Okay! We'll stay together. Promise," Jo responded crossing her heart.

"This needs orange juice," Charlie said tasting her concoction.

Emily laughed and took a moment to appreciate her friends while she grabbed the carton of juice from the fridge.

An hour later, Emily was already sufficiently buzzed on what Charlie had named The Widow Maker. Charlie had a knack for making up mixed drinks that were strong, delicious, and whose taste hid the amount of alcohol she packed into it.

It was 10:30 pm, the perfect time to head to the party. Things would be in full swing at the TKE house. Emily left her grey jeans on, but changed out of her sweater and into a low cut, fitted green tank top. She knew she would get hot dancing in the crowded house and she also wanted to look hot just in case Paige showed up.

The four girls filled up their water bottles with more Widow Maker (Charlie was insisting they say it in a Jamaican accent) and headed across campus. On the weekend nights, the usually quiet campus was crawling with students wandering back and forth between dorms, apartments, and houses, laughing and yelling with their friends. Emily was feeling good—warm and loose and ready to have some fun. They had worked out a system for parties during their first year that worked perfectly: pregame at home until everyone was nice and buzzed and then drink on the way to the party. There they would find a bush to throw their water bottles under so they could be unencumbered in the actual party. The next day they would retrieve their bottles again. No one ever took mysterious, homemade bottles of alcohol from underneath a bush.

They could hear the music swelling out of the house as they approached. It was a huge place, three floors with a big open room encompassing most of the ground floor. The guys would move all the furniture up against the walls so that most of the floor was open for dancing.

Paige was already inside, working on her third beer, when Emily and her friends walked in. She was only slightly buzzed. She, Tuck, and Carlos had arrived half an hour before and the boys had quickly disappeared into the crowd of dancing people. Paige had left her leather jacket back at the dorm, leaving her in just her white t-shirt, but it was so hot in the house that it was already starting to stick to her skin. Paige was sitting on a couch that had been pushed back against the wall and trying to keep as far away from the entwined couple that was sharing the sofa with, when she saw Jo pushing through the crowd, pulling Emily behind her. Jo spun Emily around and the two fell into an easy dance. Paige could tell they had danced together many times. They even seemed to have a little choreographed set of dance moves they did. It looked a little reminiscent of The Routine Ross and Monica did on Friends, but reworked for a crowded setting. Emily laughed the entire time they were doing it and almost fell down. The alcohol in her system had turned off Paige's anxious brain and she shamelessly watched, leaning forward slightly, as Emily's skin began to shine with sweat.

Without stopping to over think what she was about to do, Paige threw back the last half of the beer she was drinking and began to make her way toward where Emily and Jo were on the dance floor. When Paige reached them, Emily was facing away from her. Paige put her hand on Emily's shoulder and leaned in close to her ear so she could be heard over the blaring music.

"Can I join you?" she asked.

Emily turned around, gave Paige a sexy look, grabbed her hands, and pulled her forward to dance with them. The three girls danced together for a while, but Jo made some significant eye contact with Emily after about 5 minutes and left the two of them alone.

Paige wasn't the best dancer. Even in a social setting, she never seemed to know what to do with her hands. Emily was amazing. She may not have been good at choreographed dances, but her body moved and swayed naturally to the music. Paige couldn't take her eyes off of her.

At first, Emily only grabbed Paige's hands with her own for brief periods of time to twirl or pull Paige a little closer to her. But eventually she stopped pulling back. She moved close to Paige and instead of letting go of her hands, like she had been, she placed Paige's hands on her hips and the two moved with each other to the music.

Paige felt mesmerized. She pressed herself closer to Emily, her eyes raking over her sweaty chest and down into her cleavage, and then back up to her eyes which looked black and hungry.

After dancing like this for 10 minutes, the two girls were pressed against each other completely. Paige had moved her hands to Emily's back and they were resting just above her ass. After another few minutes, Emily put her arms up around Paige's neck, bent her knees a bit and then pulled her body back up, sliding against her partner. She heard Paige let out of low groan. Then Emily spun around in Paige's arms so that her back was to Paige's front. Paige had stopped thinking entirely at this point. She had returned her hands to Emily's hips and she pulled her backwards so that she was completely flush against her and Emily shamelessly ground her ass against Paige. Emily had her right hand fingers laced with Paige's and with her left she reached behind her, tangling it in Paige's hair and pulling the other girl's face down into the side of Emily's face and neck. Paige started to move her left hand forward off of Emily's hip and onto her abdomen as they danced. She had been sweating before, but Paige was wet everywhere now.

At this point, Emily couldn't take it anymore. She broke apart from Paige's body, though it nearly killed her to do so, but kept a hold of her hand and started to lead her through the crowd toward the front door.

The porch was too crowded so Emily continued with Paige down the front steps and tugged her around to the side of the house. When Emily felt they were in a secluded enough spot, she grabbed Paige and pushed her roughly against the side of the house.

"You're so fucking sexy, Paige," Emily purred before she put both of her arms around Paige's neck and hungrily pressed her mouth against Paige's.

The kiss only lasted a second, if that. Paige pushed Emily away with a scared look on her face. Being out in the cool night air again had snapped her out of the trance she had been in on the heat of the dance floor.

"What are you doing?" Paige said.

"I was trying to kiss you," Emily answered, not sure what the problem was. "There's no one around," she added, thinking maybe Paige wasn't big on making out in public.

"I…" Paige stammered, "I'm…I'm not gay."

Silence. Emily was flabbergasted.

"You're joking right?" She blurted out after neither of them said anything for several seconds. The alcohol in her system was making her much less tactful then she would normally be.

"No," Paige said more loudly this time with her back still pressed against the house. "I'm not gay."

"Then what the hell was that? Why were you dancing with me like that?" Emily asked, losing her patience rapidly.

"It was just dancing," Paige said more quietly again, willing herself to believe what she was saying.

Emily felt both crushed and humiliated. The alcohol was also making her feel more emotional than normal. She could feel tears starting to well up in her eyes.

She took another step backwards from where Paige had pushed her away, shaking her head and looking at the ground. Then she looked up at Paige, looked her right in the eye, and said, "I'm too drunk to deal with this," and walked away, leaving Paige still plastered against the side of the frat house.


	10. Chapter 10: The Aftermath

Paige did not feel good. She felt like she was a little kid waiting for her parent to pick her up sick from school. But a school she didn't go to. Her eyes started to water. She wanted Tuck and she wanted to go home.

With these two things in mind, she moved shakily off of the wall and back up the front stairs and into the house. The rest of the world seemed not to notice that something horrible had happened. Paige felt like a bomb had gone off and no one else had gotten the memo. She looked desperately through the crowd for Tuck, her only source of comfort in this place, in the whole fucking world it seemed like. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Paige knew she was overreacting, but she couldn't help how she was feeling.

She moved slowly around the room, shoving past people and getting stuck and having to go back the way she came several times. If Paige didn't find him soon, she felt like she was just going to sink onto the floor and start weeping. She had almost given up when she felt a hand on her shoulder and all of a sudden Tuck was there and she'd never been happier to see him. He took one look at her and could tell something was very wrong. She wasn't being surly, as she had been earlier. She looked terrified and exhausted and the moment she saw him, she began to cry and collapsed onto him. Carlos was behind Tuck. He looked worriedly at Paige and nodded his understanding when Tuck told him he needed to take Paige back to the dorm and then half carried his sister out of the stuffy house.

Once they were outside and moving slowly in the direction of Tuck's dorm, he looked carefully at the still crying Paige and said, "You threw another coaster, didn't you?"

"I don't know," she choked out. "I didn't mean to."

"Come on, Paigey. It's going to be okay, whatever you did."

20 minutes later, the twins had finally made it back to Tuck's dorm and onto his bed. He was sitting with his back against the wall and Paige was lying down with her head on the pillow and her legs stretched across Tuck's lap.

"Just tell me what happened," Tuck said, patting her calf.

Paige glanced over her shoulder at Tuck, and then buried her face in the pillow, starting to feel embarrassed.

"I started dancing with Emily…" Paige didn't want to go into detail. She couldn't even believe how sexually she and Emily had been touching each other and she certainly didn't want to tell Tuck about it. "And things got weird," she finished lamely.

Tuck narrowed his eyes as he looked at his sister. She wasn't telling him something. He could tell that much.

"Things got weird," he repeated and then he realized why she was acting so embarrassed, his eyes widening. "Oh my god, Paige, you dirty danced with her didn't you?!"

Paige didn't answer, just buried her head more firmly into the pillow.

"Wow. I didn't think you had it in you," she heard Tuck say. Then he went on, "So what? So you got a little slutty on the dance floor. Who cares? It happens to the best of us."

"That's not all," Paige sighed dramatically. "Then we went outside and she kissed me, sort of. I pushed her away."

"I don't really see the problem," Tuck told her honestly.

"I'm not gay! That's the problem," Paige shouted.

Tuck looked at her long and hard before he said anything.

"You know, Paige, it would be okay if you were."

"Yeah," Paige huffed in disbelief. "In what world?"

Tuck could tell this was really bothering Paige and he had a pretty good idea of why. Knowing his sister as well as he did though, he proceeded with caution.

"Look, I know you're really upset right now, Paige. But can you try to listen, like really listen, to me for a minute?" Tuck's eyes looked pleadingly at Paige. He waited for her to glance over her shoulder at him and nod before he went on. "After I came out, I told you it wasn't something we could share, but I didn't mean that you couldn't be yourself, Paige. Gay or straight. I just meant that sexuality is something really personal. I had to figure it out on my own before I could share it with anyone else. If you were gay, that would be okay, Paige. No one would be mad at you, especially not me. "

Paige didn't respond. She just stared blankly ahead at the opposite wall.

"Paige?" Tuck needed some kind of response to know she'd heard him, at least. Eventually she nodded. "Let's go to sleep okay? I'll take the couch tonight; you have my bed. You've had a hard night," he said to Paige as he moved off the bed.

"Okay," was the only response she could muster. She felt like she'd been hit by a train.

After leaving the party, Emily fished her (and Charlie's) water bottle back out of the bush they'd thrown them under across the street, and headed away from campus.

Solomon was a train town. Some train tracks even formed a portion of the campus' boundaries. The sound of the train whistle blaring out across the campus at all hours of the day and night had become as welcome and familiar to Emily as the sound of her friends' laughter. The first week of Emily's freshman year at Vallance, the train had kept her awake at night. Now when she went back to Rosewood, she found that the silence bothered her and made her uneasy.

It was in the early spring of her first year, restless from a long winter of being cooped up, that she had stumbled on the train yards during a walk. She had been walking across a small bridge and saw them stretching out on either side beneath her—rows and rows of unused train cars, dark and quiet in the moonlight. It had taken a while, but she'd eventually found a safe path down the steep ground under the bridge that led to them. She felt like she had walked into a cathedral, wandering between the hulking, metal boxes. She still felt that same reverence each time she went back.

Her feet took her there instinctually, even drunk as she was and getting drunker as she walked. She slipped a little on the path under the bridge and ripped a hole in the knee of her jeans catching herself, but she didn't care. If she had cut herself, she couldn't feel it yet.

Once in the yard itself, she picked a car at random and threw the water bottles up on top, where they landed with a loud thump. Emily climbed up the ladder on the side of the train car and hoisted herself on to the top to join the bottles.

She felt horrible. She had been so sure, when she and Paige were dancing together, that Paige felt the same way. She had moved forward on that faith, climbed it like a staircase, trusting that Paige was behind her. But when she had finally turned around, to confront those feelings, found herself utterly alone.

She drank the rest of one of the bottles and then lay back to look up at the sky. Emily could only ever recognize one constellation: The Big Dipper. She let her eyes drift lazily across the sky until she found it. Tonight it felt like a friend and she used it as an anchor to keep herself from floating away completely. The world seemed to be spinning around her as she drifted into space.

"I'm so drunk," Emily said to no one. "Eden is going to kill me." Very distantly, Emily heard her cell phone ringing but

_it's impossible to answer a phone in space_

she thought as her eyes closed.

Emily jerked back awake at 4:30 am. Her phone was blaring incessantly. She still felt a little drunk. She dug her hand into her pocket and answered.

"Hello?" Emily said in a gravelly voice.

"Where the fuck are you, Em? Do you have any idea what time it is?" Eden did not sound happy at all.

"I'll be home soon, Edie, don't yell."

"The last time we saw you, you were dancing with Paige. Then you disappear and the next thing we know, Paige is being drug out of the party in tears and then you're MIA for _4 hours_. We've been worried sick trying to find you!"

"I'm sorry," Emily said. "I'll see you at home." She hung up the phone.

The news of Paige's state as she left the party made her feel about a hundred times worse than she did already. She felt like she could barely walk under the weight of the guilt pressing down on her.

The sky was just starting to lighten when Emily limped through the door of The Log half an hour later. She _had_ cut her knee when she fell and it was hurting a lot.

Eden started in on the lecture immediately, but Emily spoke over her.

"Not now," Emily said with a harsh finality in her voice.

"Em, what did you do?" Jo asked looking at her knee.

"I danced with the devil in the pale moonlight," Emily replied sarcastically.

"Alright, come on," Charlie led Emily into the dining room and over to one of the chairs. Then said, "Pants off."

Emily didn't ask questions. She just popped them open and slid them off as Charlie walked away. Emily had known, as soon as she realized how badly her knee was cut, that Charlie would be the one to bandage her up. Charlie came back with the first aid kit. She gently cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls, smeared some antibiotic on it, and covered it with a large bandage.

"Okay killer, take these Tylenol with a big glass of water and head to bed." For someone who spoke mostly in sexual innuendos, Charlie was, surprisingly, the most nurturing of her friends.

Emily didn't stop to pick up her pants or do anything but take the Tylenol. She went downstairs, peeled off her tank top and bra, fell into bed, and slept until late in the afternoon.


	11. Chapter 11: A New Friend

When Paige got back to Stanford on Monday, she made a decision. It would be May in a few days. Her classes would be ending in a few weeks and then she would have finals. She also had swimming to think about. Paige just didn't think she could handle doing all of that and trying to figure out what the hell her sexuality was. There was only so much one person could bear, she reasoned. So Paige decided to ignore herself and her thoughts and feelings until summer. It was definitely wasn't the best decision, and Paige had a feeling it would backfire on her somehow, but she made it anyway. In short, she slipped into the peaceful denial of an undetonated bomb.

As soon as she got back to her dorm room, she pulled the picture of Emily and her friends having a snowball fight off of her wall. She was just about to drop it in the trash, her hand hovering over the bin, when she thought better of it. Whatever happened in the end, Emily had shown her something about herself, had made her feel something no one had before. And that was worth remembering. Instead, Paige pulled out the wooden box from underneath her bed, wrote _Emily _on the back, and placed it, among the other items in the box, on the top of the coaster stained with her brother's blood. Then she closed the lid.

Usually, Emily would have been looking forward to the cast party. But since the incident at the frat party—that's what Emily was calling it, The Incident—she felt like she was getting over a bad case of the flu. She was unfocused and tired and she certainly didn't feel like socializing with a bunch of cheery thespians. She couldn't avoid the party though, because Eden had volunteered to have it at The Log. And the only thing worse than going to the party in her own house would be avoiding her own house for an entire night. _A rock and a hard place, _Emily thought as she, Charlie, and Jo tidied up the house while Eden was out buying food and alcohol with money she'd collected from the cast and crew.

"Em, it's been a week," Jo said, collecting dishes from around the living room. "Are you ever going to tell us what happened?"

"I told you. Paige and I were dancing. I thought she was into me, but it turns out she's just a handsy straight girl."

"I saw you two dancing," Charlie cut in while shoving an armful of shoes into the coat closet. "She wanted a piece, Em. I don't care _what_ she said."

"I just thought maybe we could look into the whole 'crying Paige' thing. Don't you think that's weird? I mean, what did you say to her?" Jo went on.

"Why does it matter? It's not like I'm ever going to see her again. The whole thing was humiliating," Emily responded.

"No, but you're going to see her brother," Jo told her very matter-of-fact-ly.

Emily stopped dead. The cloth she was using to dust fell out of her hand.

"Oh my god…Tuck!" Emily said slapping her hand against her forehead.

"Don't tell me you forgot he was going to be here tonight," Charlie said seeing Emily's reaction.

Emily had forgotten. In all of the general party dreading she had been occupied with, she'd managed to completely forget that Tuck was one of the leads in the play and would _definitely_ be attending the cast party.

"Oh my god," Emily said again. And then to no one in particular, "What am I going to do? He probably hates me. I emotionally wounded his sister." Emily covered her face with both of her hands and sat down on the coffee table.

"He could probably give you some tips on how to get into Paige's pants," Charlie said. "You know, show you where you went wrong."

"You're not helping, Charlotte!" Emily said in exasperation.

"Or you could just avoid him," Charlie offered, shrugging her shoulders. "Or, you could try to make out with him, too, make it like a family affair. They _are_ twins."

"Charlotte!" Emily shouted.

Jo had collapsed onto the couch from laughter at this point.

"I hate you both," Emily huffed in mock anger and went to go take out the trash.

People started filtering into The Log around 10pm for the cast party. As per usual, it began with strictly those who had worked on the play in some way, but as the night wore on, those peoples' friends and boyfriends and girlfriends arrived.

Emily ambled around in the crowd talking to a few people. There was a beer pong table set up in the kitchen and she stopped to watch Liz, the stage manager, beat Eden at a game. She was avoiding the living room where she'd seen Tuck drinking and talking with some of his friends.

As she wandered around the party, though, her mind started to wander back to the previous weekend, to the way Paige's body felt against hers. Emily realized, with a heavy sigh, that she wanted to fix what happened, somehow, to get some sort of closure concerning the situation. And Tuck was the closest she was going to get to that. She rubbed her eyes wearily as she realized what she wanted to do was apologize.

Emily moved to the living room doorway and chatted with a girl from her poetry workshop until she saw Tuck's friends head off to get more drinks. She walked up to him very timidly, almost chickened out, but finally approached him and said, "Hey, Tuck. Shit. I mean Theo. Sorry. " _Jesus, _Emily though, _I've fucked the whole thing up before I even started._

He just chuckled a little and replied, "Hey Emily. How are you?"

"Well, I didn't spend my evening walking through hell, so I'm better than you," Emily told him, referring to the play, and trying to break the ice with a cheesy joke. Surprisingly, it worked.

He laughed in earnest, but it sounded so similar to Paige's beautiful laugh that it felt more like a defeat than a victory in Emily's heart.

"Can we talk?" Emily asked him.

"We can, but do you really want to do it here?" Tuck asked, glancing around at the crowded room. He seemed to already know the conversation would be of a personal nature.

"Do you want to go on the roof?" she suggested.

"Really?" His eyes had lit up like a little kid's might at this prospect.

"Sure, we do it all the time."

The two headed up the stairs. The roof was accessible from both Eden and Charlie's bedrooms. However, it sounded like Charlie was entertaining a guest, so Emily led Tuck through Eden's room to the window. She opened it and hoisted herself out, then turned around to give Tuck a hand.

"This is so cool," Tuck gushed as they settled themselves on the slight slope of the roof.

It wasn't a great view, just the small town street with its brick sidewalks, an apartment building and its parking lot, and the gas station and convenience store in the distance. Tuck was delighted, though.

"Oh my god, you can see the Quickie from here!" He said excitedly about the convenience store.

"You seem like a cheap date," Emily said slipping into teasing tone with him. It seemed natural.

"Uh. Rude," he huffed, but laughed loudly while he did. "I totally am, though. It only takes like two drinks."

"Ooh, I'll have to remember that," Emily said in a seductive voice. And then, seeing her opening, went on, "Speaking of drunken disasters…"

Tuck looked over at her with warmth in his eyes. "You don't owe me an explanation, Emily."

"I appreciate you saying that, but I still feel horrible, especially about the way I left things," Emily was struggling to get her words out. She wanted to say this right. "Even though I was hurt and embarrassed, I shouldn't have walked away and left her in an unfamiliar place like that. And since I can't apologize to Paige face to face, I felt like I should at least apologize to you. I can tell how close you two are by the way she talks about you and watches you when you perform. So, I know it must have hurt you, too, to see Paige like that. So I'm sorry. I didn't treat your sister right. And I know that."

Emily maintained eye contact with Tuck the whole time she spoke. She wanted him to know how earnest her apology was. And now that she finished, he was staring at her like she was a new species or a UFO. He finally spoke after a long pause.

"Paige told me you were the most perceptive person she'd ever met. I can see now what she meant," Tuck told her. "I didn't realize I needed to hear…well, something from you about it until you started talking. So thank you for insisting. "

Emily nodded. She was glad she'd found the courage to apologize, too. She felt better already.

"I don't want you to think the whole thing was your fault, though, Emily," Tuck said.

"What do you mean?" she asked. Despite what her friends had told her, Emily was ready to accept full responsibility for what happened between her and Paige.

"God. Paige would kill me if she knew I was telling you this," Tuck started, "but you deserve to know. The thing is, what you have to understand about Paige…it's like her body is running about ten steps ahead of her brain. She feels things and can't stop herself from acting on them. She always has to learn things the hard way. Whatever it was that happened between you two, Paige hasn't even begun to process it."

Emily was listening intently, trying to understand what Tuck was getting at, but she was still confused.

"What I'm trying to say is, I think there was a reason she danced with you that night, but I don't think she's realized what that is yet," Tuck finished.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do," Emily told him, "but I don't want to get my hopes up that maybe I wasn't wrong about…her."

"I'm not trying to get your hopes up," Tuck said, beginning to realize that despite how brief their interactions had been, Emily had developed genuine feelings for Paige. "I truly believe Paige still has to figure out what she wants in life. I don't know if she's gay or not. That's not what I'm saying."

"Okay, then maybe I don't know what you're saying," Emily admitted.

"I've never told anyone outside of my family about this, because I knew they wouldn't understand and they'd just judge her. But I think it's important that you do understand this," he said, scooting closer to Emily and reaching up to the left side of his head. Emily wasn't sure what to expect, but she watched as he combed through his hair with his fingers and then spread the hair apart, revealing a long scar running vertically along his head, just behind his ear.

"Holy shit, is that a scar?" Emily asked leaning forward to get a better look in the dim light from the window behind them.

"It is," Tuck confirmed. "Paige gave it to me. She threw a marble coaster at me the day I came out to my family."

Emily looked horrified, but she kept quiet, sure that Tuck would explain.

"I really failed Paige that day," he said, shaking his head sadly. "I actually believed for about 12 hours that she hated me because I was gay. That wasn't true obviously. I should have known that. She felt like I had abandoned her by not telling her before I told our parents. We're so close, you know? I know now that she didn't mean to do it. But I think since that day, she's been almost scared of herself, of feeling something and losing control again, the way she did."

Emily wiped a tear off of her cheek. It sounded like a horrible way to live, suppressing all your feelings out of fear of what they might make you do.

"I think she couldn't help feeling something with you last weekend and it scared the shit out of her and when her brain finally caught up, she shut down again," Tuck finished his explanation.

"I wish I had known," Emily said, more to herself than to Tuck. "We're all so…human. But it's hard to remember we _all _are, somehow. That everyone is just as filled with the past as we are. It's hard to get outside of our own experiences, sometimes." Emily thought she sounded like one of her journal entries, completely indecipherable to anyone but herself.

But then Tuck spoke. "_I think we keep ourselves so tightly wound we never see our spools. We saw them, clear as skeletons, that time. What's wrong? What's right? To know that you could take the heart and eat it raw."_

Emily just stared at him.

"It's from a poem, one of my favorites," Tuck explained. "What you were saying reminded me of it."

"That was exactly what I was trying to say," Emily said in awe. She'd never met someone else who seemed to think in poetry the way she did. "On Sundays, in the morning, Eden usually makes pancakes. You should come tomorrow, Theo."

Tuck smiled at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly.

"I would like that," he told her. "And Emily, you can call me Tuck."

The next morning, Tuck came over at 10 am for pancakes and he stayed all day with them at The Log. They decided to watch Moulin Rouge and Tuck was the duet partner Eden had always dreamed of. He and Jo had an in depth discussion about Tegan and Sara which turned into a discussion of Grey's Anatomy which, somehow, turned into a conversation about war reenactors. After he volunteered to make homemade pizza for dinner, Tuck taught Charlie how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, which she insisted was the last piece of seduction she had yet to master. He even brought over the poetry book he had quoted from the night before for Emily to borrow without her having to ask.

That was the day Tuck began to become one of their best friends. Over the months he fell seamlessly into their group like a piece they hadn't known they'd been missing.

**Note: The poem that Tuck quotes during this chapter is Beth Ann Fennelly's Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris from the book Open House.**


	12. Chapter 12: Look But Don't Touch

"Well, I'm gonna go," Paige said, looking around the room and spotting her underwear and bra in a pile beside the door. She got off the bed and hurriedly put them on, locating her pants and shirt, which were on the desk, as she did so.

"Okay, um, are you sure? You can stay awhile…sleep here if you want."

Paige yanked on her shirt and turned around to make eye contact while she pulled on her pants.

"I have a really early flight back to Philly tomorrow so I should probably get back to my dorm."

"Right, well. I had a great time tonight, Paige. Could I call you over the summer, at least?"

"Um. Yeah, I…" Paige said, pulling her flip flops out from under the desk chair and sliding them on her feet. "You know, I had a nice time, too, David. I'm just going to be so busy this summer. Maybe we could just touch base in the fall."

He got up off the bed and said, "Let me get dressed, I'll walk you out." Clearly, he still thought he had a chance with Paige and could salvage the situation by being as gentlemanly as possible.

"But Paige held up her hand in front of him and said quickly, "No, don't bother. I'm sure I can find my way out. Thanks again for…" she stammered. "You really have a…" _God, could I be more awkward?_ she thought, opening the door. "See you next fall," she finished, shutting the door on the confused boy and then hurrying down the hall and out of his apartment.

As soon as she got out of the building, Paige checked her phone and saw that some time during the night, Tuck had sent her a text.

"Can't wait to see you TOMORROW!" it said. _Maybe I'll just call him, _Paige reasoned. _It was rude of me not to answer his text. I don't want Tuck to be mad. _She felt sort of panicky and she noticed as she opened her favorites list to call Tuck that her hands were shaking slightly, but brushed it off as a chill from the cool night air.

"Paige?" Tuck answered, his voice heavy with sleep.

"Hey, did I wake you up?" Paige said feeling slightly bad.

"What do you think? It's like 6 am here," Tuck, who was already back in Philadelphia, groaned at her.

"Oh, I, I didn't realize, I guess," Paige told him, wondering how she had missed noticing how late it was when she'd opened her phone.

"Why are you up so late?' Tuck asked.

"I had that end of the year swim banquet tonight. And then a bunch of us went to a bar after. I must have lost track of the time," Paige told her brother. But her voice sounded kind of hollow and shaken.

"Paige, are you okay?" Tuck asked her. "Why did you call?"

"I just saw your text. I didn't want you to be mad because I hadn't answered." Saying it out loud, Paige could see her logic had been slightly flawed. "I mean, I just wanted to talk to you, I guess…" she trailed off.

"Are you crying?" Tuck was starting to get worried. She wasn't making much sense and he'd heard a falter in her voice.

"What? No," Paige replied, but as she said it, she felt something wet against the knuckles of the hand clutching her phone. She reached up with her other hand and wiped tears away from both of her eyes. For reasons she couldn't explain, Paige started laughing. "Huh. I guess I am."

"Please tell me what's wrong," Tuck said. "You're worrying me, Paige."

"Do you remember when we were six," Paige said, rather than answering, "and I put my hand on the waffle iron right after Mom told us not to touch it?"

"Vividly," Tuck responded. "I can still hear your scream."

"I knew it was hot. I knew Mom wasn't lying. But I couldn't help myself. I just had to feel it."

"But why?" Tuck never had understood that particular trait his sister possessed.

"Otherwise, I would've spent my whole life wondering."

"You're not going to tell me what's wrong, are you?" Tuck wasn't sure why he tried, sometimes. Paige always did whatever she wanted.

"I just wanted to talk to you," Paige said, realizing that was the truth. "I'm sorry I woke you up, Tuck. I'll see you later this afternoon, okay?"

"Alright. You're easier to get information out of face to face anyway," Tuck relented. "I love you."

"Love you, too. Bye," Paige responded and hung up.

When Paige got back to her dorm, she felt comforted by the emptiness of it. Her roommate had gone home for the summer already. The walls were bare and the room had been stripped of every personal and homey touch. Paige felt like she was standing at the beginning of something, like she could start again and figure things out. She felt free and lonely and raw, like the carrots she used to help her grandfather pull from the soil of his garden. She laughed at this image as it ran through her mind.

For once, Paige told herself, she was going to think before she acted. It would be The Summer of Look But Don't Touch. She wanted to start again, to go back to the beginning of herself and figure things out. It was only about 2 hours now until she had to leave for the airport. Rather than sleep and be even more tired when she woke up after such a short time, she decided to stay up now and sleep on the plane.

Paige thought about how to spend her time. She wanted to start again right now, to clear away the dead leaves that had piled up around her soul over time. She thought about what was at the very root of her, to when she had been happiest and sure of the things she loved. She remembered back to the summers of her childhood, eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream, alone in the sweet dark of the living room with the flicker of the TV playing across her face, and her own pure laughter breaking out of her mouth in bursts.

_I want to go back to that, _Paige thought. _I want to start there._

The only things left in her room were three suitcases. She went over to them and pulled out her laptop and binder of DVDs that she was taking home with her, flipping through the discs until she found what she was looking for. Then she slipped it into her computer. She turned out the lights, climbed onto her bed with her laptop, and pressed play.

As the unmistakable opening notes of the _I Love Lucy_ theme song began to play into the empty room, Paige felt herself grin, wishing for nothing in that moment, but a bowl of ice cream.

The Summer of Look But Don't Touch (though, it wouldn't be until years later that Emily found out Paige had named it this) was beginning well for Emily.

She decided she would just stay at The Log again because it was beginning to feel more like home than Rosewood. And with her mother spending more and more of her time in Texas, the only people tying her to the place were Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. When Emily told them she was staying in Solomon for the summer, all three had decided to come visit for the first two weeks of July. Emily suspected they didn't enjoy going home to Rosewood much either, anymore. They had outgrown the place. Their visit was still a month off, though.

Eden was away at the theatre camp near Chicago for most of the summer. She had secured a job there as a counselor and contributor to the acting workshops. Emily laughed at the thought of Eden roughing it in a cabin or tent. She wasn't sure how rustic the camp would be, but she had a feeling that Eden wouldn't be too pleased. She was someone who liked long hot showers and fluffy, clean comforters.

Jo had decided to go home to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and help her dad out with his contracting business. He mostly did things like basement remodels and improvements to existing structures. Jo's mom had died when she was in middle school and she always spent school holidays and breaks with her dad because she didn't want him to be alone. The two of them also owned three Labrador retrievers and Jo missed them a lot when she was at Vallance. Often times, after a call with her dad, Emily would ask Jo for Dad and Dog Updates, as she called them, because she knew it made Jo happy to share her life with someone like that.

Charlie was staying in Solomon for the summer as well, which Emily was thankful for. She wanted the company and the help with the rent. Emily didn't think she could handle the whole $500 by herself on her fitness center salary. The previous summer, when Emily and Eden had been the two staying at The Log, they had, for the most part, done their own things during the day and then hung out at night. This summer, Charlie was insisting they adopt some sort of project to do together. She told Emily that they needed to think of something now that summer had officially started and they were the only two in the house. The very next day, she hopped on Emily's bed at 7 am, bursting with an idea.

"Why are you awake?" Emily said groggily as Charlie bounced around on her mattress.

"You know me," Charlie said in a chipper voice, "I keep odd hours."

"Well, I don't," Emily said pulling the sheet over her head. "Go away."

"But I have an idea!" Charlie made no move to abandon her mission to rouse Emily.

"For what?" Emily was not following at all.

"For our PROJECT!"

"Charlotte, you are insufferable. Were you serious about that yesterday?"

"Damn fucking serious," Charlie responded. "If you get up, I'll make you bacon and eggs."

"We don't have bacon and eggs." Emily had barely scrounged dinner together last night. She needed to go shopping.

"Yes, we do," Charlie corrected her. "I went shopping."

Emily stuck her head back out of the covers at this news.

"When?" She said suspiciously.

"I told you, I keep odd hours."

Emily knew Charlie wouldn't leave her alone until she got what she wanted. Grumpily, she pulled the covers back and stood up, glaring at Charlie.

"I like my bacon extra crispy," Emily said while thinking it was going to be a long summer if Charlie was going to wake her up this early every morning.

An hour later (Charlie really had outdone herself with breakfast), sitting happily in the dining room, Emily finally let Charlie tell her about her project idea.

"I want to do a mural," Charlie began. "In here, on that wall," she explained pointing to the long blank wall of the dining room that wasn't broken up by windows.

Emily could see an excited gleam in Charlie's eyes. Charlie had taken a painting course during the winter and had loved it more than she'd ever expected. Emily should have expected this, since Charlie had told her the month previous that she was itching to try something large scale.

"I'm totally on board," Emily told her friend, "but a mural of what?"

"Well, I was thinking that _you _should pick out a poem or a quote or something and we could design it around that," Charlie explained.

Now Emily had the excited gleam in her eye. Her face broke into a smile and Charlie could see she was all in.

Emily had to work at noon, but she spent most of the morning with books spread out all over the couch, looking for the perfect bit of something to build a mural around. The possibilities were endless, though. It was hard to choose.

Most of what Emily's job entailed was sitting at a desk at the entrance of the fitness center and asking people to sign in and out and show her their IDs when they came in to work out. She also controlled the TVs and music and had to wipe down all the equipment and generally tidy up before her shift ended. It was pretty boring, but Emily liked it, especially during the school year because she could do her homework. Today she took her Norton Poetry Anthology and lazily thumbed through the tissue thin pages, reading poems at random.

Emily had faith in literature the way most people have faith in God. The right stories, the right memoirs and essays, the right poems, always came to her when she most needed them. She knew that the perfect words were waiting for her somewhere. She just had to find them.

A sweaty guy came over when her shift was about to end and asked her to change the channel on one of the TVs just as she was turning a page. She grabbed the remote and went closer to the TV to oblige. When she came back, it was there, the poem. She ran her fingers lightly over the page as she read "A Blessing," by James Wright three times in succession, seeing all the mural possibilities in her mind's eye. When her shift ended 15 minutes later, Emily hurried home to show her find to Charlie.

Charlie was once again cooking when Emily walked in and flopped the book down in front of the cutting board on which she was currently slicing a zucchini.

"Last three lines," she told Charlie. "What do you think?"

Charlie read in silence for a moment and then read the last three lines aloud.

"_Suddenly I realized  
if I stepped out of my body I would break  
into blossom."_

Charlie smiled. "It's perfect, Em. Let's do it!"

That night, during dinner, they talked about the design ideas each of them had, Charlie jumping up to point to a certain sections of the wall a few times, until they settled on an idea they both liked.

The next day, the two girls went to the hardware store downtown and bought paint— white and primer to go over the light brown that the wall was currently painted, and about twenty small cans of every color they could think of. They bought different sizes of brushes and a tray and two rollers and also some flat, rectangular contractor pencils just because Charlie thought they were hardcore. It was a little pricey (and heavy) but, Emily reasoned, if they did it right, it would be worth every penny.

It took five coats, painted over the course of the week with drying time, to even get the wall completely white with no brown showing through. They kept the windows open and three fans going in the room, but Emily still felt a little dizzy with paint fumes their first couple of days. Once the wall was sufficiently white, they set out with the pencils, painstakingly sketching out the mural.

Emily began with the text of the poem. In almost the exact center of the wall, using a loose, thick, stylized sort of script, she spelled out the words. Meanwhile, Charlie began to sketch out a barbed wire fence along the bottom fourth of the wall. Once they were done with that, they started sketching the flowers.

They didn't rush. The days of June slid like ribbons past them. When their arms got tired, they lay down on their backs and talked. They listened to music and danced around the house in just their underwear when the temperature climbed into the 90s. They made popcorn and watched movies. Emily even bought a few water guns at the dollar store and they spent an entire afternoon chasing each other around the block and screaming at the top of their lungs. Something about hanging out with Charlie made Emily feel like she was a little kid again. And all the while, the mural slowly took shape.


	13. Chapter 13: Independence Day

Paige was outside of the TKE house again and Emily was pressing her up against the house with her hands tangled in Paige's hair. Emily pressed her lips lightly against Paige's at first and when Paige didn't pull away, she stared to deepen the kiss, her lips opening and moving slowly. Eventually, Emily ran her tongue just over Paige's bottom lip, coaxing her mouth open, making sure she wanted it. And when Paige moaned, Emily slipped her tongue inside and ran it along the roof of her mouth, causing Paige to lean even further into her, her own tongue beginning to move with Emily's.

No one had ever kissed Paige like this, with such a delirious mixture of passion and patience. Emily slid her hands down from Paige's neck and onto her chest, cupping her breasts so lightly that Paige wasn't sure it was actually happening. Paige broke the kiss and looked down at what Emily was doing with her hands. She was squeezing more firmly now, licking her lips slightly as Paige watched her.

"Is this okay?" Emily asked.

"Yes," Paige answered breathily, getting more turned on by the second.

Emily was rubbing her hardened nipples through the fabric of her shirt and bra. As she did this, she leaned into her and slid one of her legs between Paige's. Then she leaned her face into Paige's ear and whispered, "I want you," before sucking lightly on Paige's earlobe and then running her tongue along the rest of her ear.

Paige let out a long groan of pleasure while Emily ground into her and, moving her mouth back to Paige's, resumed their kissing. Emily slid one of her hand's down to Paige's waistband and flicked open the button easily. Then she slid the zipper down, and at the exact moment she slid her tongue back into Paige's mouth she also slid her hand into Paige's underwear.

"Fuck," Paige moaned,

"Emily…"

The name she spoke out loud as she opened her eyes. She was alone, lying flat on her back in her bed and panting. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own hand that was moving between her legs. Paige didn't stop to think about what she was doing. She was so turned on by the dream she'd just had. She needed the release. It didn't take long before her hips bucked up and her back arched and she was riding out her orgasm.

"Well," Paige said to the dark of her room as her heart rate slowed back down, "that was new."

Paige glanced across the room at her luminous clock and saw that it was 3:46 am. Then it dawned on her that it was the 4th of July. Paige had been home in Philadelphia for over a month.

She had continued, in that time to try to get back to what she felt was the true core of her being. This involved doing a lot of things she used to do when she was a kid, because, Paige had decided, kids didn't think about their motivations or the pressure put on them by other people. When kids did things, they did them because they liked the activity, whatever it was. Paige had lost herself somewhere along the way and now she was finding herself again.

When she wasn't being a lifeguard at the neighborhood pool, Paige spent a lot of time reading comic books in the tree house and drinking orange Fanta. She visited her Dad at his office at the church and went to pick up the mail for him from the P.O. Box at the Post Office down the street. She made Tuck go to the park with her to play football and Frisbee golf. They visited their grandma and helped her in the garden. The freckles that used to dot her cheeks and the top of her nose reappeared. She spent a lot of time barefoot. She felt pure. Paige started to slowly trust herself again and she figured when it was time to address the sexuality issue, her body would let her know, because she was learning to listen to it instead of fear it.

Paige took this dream as her body's way of saying it wanted Paige to consider this option. The strangest sensation came over her; she felt like she was beside herself, literally. Like her mind had separated itself from her body and the two were laying side by side in her bed, holding hands.

"Okay, body," she said out loud. "Okay."

Paige tried to go back to sleep, but her mind was too busy thinking about her body. Eventually she gave up and went downstairs, thinking she would just find something to watch on TV until the rest of her family woke up. Paige's family was going to her Aunt Kay and Uncle Russ' later in the day for the holiday; they had a pool in their backyard and always had a big barbeque for the whole family on Independence Day.

With her body still buzzing from the dream she'd just had, Paige padded quietly down the stairs. She knew she had some kind of connection with Emily, that much she could admit. And she could even see, though it scared her a little to admit it, that she was attracted to Emily. But did that mean she was gay?

Paige was so caught up in her thoughts as she walked into the living room, that she didn't hear the other set of footsteps coming around the corner from the kitchen. Tuck walked around the corner when Paige was about a foot away and his sudden appearance startled Paige pretty badly.

"Holy shit, Tuck!" she said, stumbling back a few steps.

He looked unfazed. He'd heard Paige coming.

"What are you doing up?" Tuck asked her.

She considered the progress she had made over the summer so far and couldn't bring herself to lie to him.

"I had a super vivid sex dream and couldn't fall back to sleep," she said.

The two looked at each other for a few seconds, Tuck narrowing his eyes ever so slightly.

Then he said, "You wanna watch TV?" They stared at each other for another few seconds.

"Why are _you _up?" she asked him.

"Because you are," he said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, okay," Paige replied to both of these pieces of information and they sat down on the couch together. She grabbed the remote, switched on the TV, and looked through the menu until she found some Golden Girls reruns.

An entire episode went by before Tuck spoke again.

"You wanna talk about it?" he finally said, turning to his sister.

"Not really," Paige said still looking at the TV. "It was Emily. I don't want to weird you out. I know you're friends with her now."

"I don't want you to explain it to me in detail," Tuck said, "but usually a sex dream doesn't keep someone from going back to sleep. Did it upset you?"

"No…it didn't upset me," Paige said truthfully. "It was just…it got me thinking about…stuff."

"About your sexuality," Tuck stated.

"Yeah," Paige said quietly. "I mean, being attracted to one girl, does that make me gay?"

Tuck could tell this wasn't a question Paige was actually expecting him to answer. Silence fell between the two of them again and began to stretch across several minutes, but Paige wasn't paying attention to The Golden Girls anymore. Tuck watched her out of the corner of his eye, like he knew Paige had more to say.

"That morning I flew home, when I called you. I had sex with this guy," Paige said and looked over at Tuck to see his reaction to this news. He seemed pretty neutral about the sudden confession.

"Oh, really?" was all he said.

"Yeah," Paige went on. "His name's David. He's one of the swimmers on the guys' team. He went to the bar with everyone that night."

"Do you like him?" Tuck asked.

Paige thought for a moment, then shrugged. "He's nice. And funny. He's a good swimmer."

Tuck just quirked one of his eyebrows, as if to say, "That didn't answer my question."

"No, I guess not," Paige conceded.

"How was the sex?" he asked. Tuck was in a strange mood. He seemed to be keeping his words to a bare minimum and was overly wary of bullshit.

Paige was a little taken aback by his question, but he was looking at her so earnestly, she felt she owed him an honest answer.

"It was…it was…fine. It didn't feel _bad,_" she said. She definitely hadn't been blown away by it.

"Were you turned on?" Tuck asked.

"Not like I was with Emily. No," Paige admitted, finally cottoning on that Tuck was not asking her all these questions out of curiosity. He was trying to help her figure things out.

"I have this theory," Tuck said suddenly, "about sexuality. I think it's a lot less about sex than people make it out to be. Whenever people talk about sexuality, it's always about fucking. And it is that, obviously, but its more, too."

Paige was listening to her brother with rapt attention now. Tuck glanced at her and then continued, "I think it's more about that moment right after sex. I think sexuality is who you're still attracted to that moment right after you've finished having sex with them. It's whatever it is that keeps you in the bed, just wanting to stare at the other person. Sex is great, but you have to want the person the rest of the time, too, all those millions of other moments."

"After it was over," Paige said, "I just wanted to leave. He wanted to call me, over the summer. But I told him no."

"Just some things to think about, Paige. I know you'll figure it out," Tuck said, not wanting to push her into a conversation she wasn't ready to have. Then he looked back at the TV and so did Paige, but only one of them was really watching it.

They both fell asleep again, there in front of the television, Paige leaning onto Tuck's shoulder and drooling a little.

Later that day, Paige and Tuck and their parents arrived at the family barbeque. Paige looked around for her Grandma Hazel and when she spotted her, immediately trotted over to join her at the table on the patio, shadowed by a large umbrella.

Grandma Hazel, other than Tuck, was Paige's favorite person in the world. She always spent time with her whenever she got the chance. Because their parents had both worked, Tuck and Paige had spent most of their childhood with their Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Frank.

Hazel was a powerhouse of a woman. She was a wonderful cook, still whipping up delicious dinners now that she was in her 80s. She could play the piano and, especially around the holidays, would spend an hour or two at a time, playing songs for Tuck and Paige and singing with them. She wore high heels at all hours of the day. The sound of her clomping around on the tile in the kitchen used to wake Paige up in the morning when she and Tuck would stay over. Hazel always spoke her mind.

Grandpa Frank had been a much quieter person. He'd liked to garden and grew beautiful roses. He used to sit on the patio behind their house with Paige and Tuck and tell them stories he would make up on the spot. He'd loved to fish and he'd always worn a flat brimmed baseball cap.

When Paige and Tuck were in the 4th grade, Grandpa Frank had passed away suddenly from a stroke. Grandma Hazel had been crushed when he died and Paige had made it her goal to cheer her grandmother up every day because when you're ten years old, you aren't as frightened of the sadness of others.

Looking back on it, Paige still wondered how someone who had been married for 50 years could ever get used to being without that person. It just didn't seem possible. Thinking about it still made Paige's heart literally ache in her chest. But then again, Grandma Hazel was no ordinary woman. Paige cherished her relationship with her grandma.

She walked up to her and kissed her on the top of her head in greeting.

"Hey, Grandma," Paige said. "How are you?"

"It's hot as hell out here, dear," Hazel replied. Paige laughed.

"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "You want some lemonade or something?"

"No, thank you, I already had three glasses. My old bladder can't handle much more," she told Paige, slapping her knee at her own joke and chuckling. "What have you been up to since I saw you four days ago?"

Paige knew her Grandma meant this as nothing more than a joke, but she'd been wondering if she should talk to her about what she'd been trying to figure out. Paige decided to go for it. Grandma Hazel knew Tuck was gay and she didn't care one bit, so why should it be different for Paige?

"Actually, Grandma," Paige began and then let out a deep sigh, "I've been trying to figure out if I'm gay or not."

Paige held her breath until her Grandma said, "Well, in my experience, genitals have been known to lie. But not the heart. It'll point you right."

"What would you think, though," Paige asked craving her grandmother's approval, "if I _was _gay?"

"I would think that you're the girl I always thought you were," Hazel told her.

"You thought I was gay?" Paige asked incredulously.

"No," Hazel said in a clear, strong voice. "I thought you were _brave._ It takes a lot of courage to be who you truly are, dearheart."

Paige beamed. Grandma Hazel winked at her and patted her hand, then held it in her own wrinkled one.

"Do you remember the time you almost drowned in this very pool?" Hazel asked Paige, pointing to the pool with the hand she wasn't using to clutch Paige's. She could always sense what Paige needed.

"No," Paige said, even though she did remember. She wanted to hear her Grandma tell it because it was one of her favorite stories. "Tell me."

"Well, you were about, oh, eight years old, I'd say. You and Tuck had been in swimming lessons for a few summers. Now, you know our Tuck, everything always came so easy to him so, of course, he'd already mastered treading water. But you were having a lot more trouble getting a hang of it. You always had to fight tooth and nail to keep up with that boy. One afternoon, I brought you two over here to swim. Sometimes I'd swim with you, but that day I thought I'd just watch from the deck and keep an eye on you. I should have known better!" Grandma Hazel laughed loudly. "You two had been swimming for a while and Tuck wanted to show me how he could tread water, so he came on over to the deep end. I think you must have been a little distracted watching him and feeling jealous that you couldn't do it, too, because the next thing I knew, you'd slipped right over the steep edge and into the deep end as well. And boy did that scare you. If you'd kept your head, I think you could've doggy paddled over to the side. But you were panicked and started flailing around, trying to keep your head above the water. Tuck, of course, would've done anything to help you. He swam right over to you and tried to help pull you over to the side, but you were so scared you just tried to grab onto him and pulled him under with you! I knew there was nothing for it. If I didn't drag you both out of there, and quick, you were going to kill the both of you. So I slipped off my shoes, jumped in, and pulled you both over to the side. My goodness, were you upset! As soon as you climbed out you told me, 'Grandma, I am never going swimming again!' Oh, that was fine. I told you, you should do what you thought was best. But Tuck was still swimming and if there was one thing you couldn't stand, it was being left behind. Sure enough, five minutes later, I heard a splash, turned around and you were back in the water! My brave little Paige."

Paige's heart swelled. Not with pride for her own courage, but with adoration. Adoration for the woman who thought nothing of jumping into a pool fully clothed to save her. Paige looked at her Grandma and knew she hadn't rescued her that day so she could live a life of fear and denial. She needed to be brave, like she had been when she was eight. She didn't want to be left behind. Paige promised herself she was going to make her Grandma proud. (Though, of course, she already had.)


	14. Chapter 14: Multitudes

By mid July, the mural was really starting to come together. The wall in the dining room looked like it was exploding with flowers. Emily and Charlie had spent days drawing and painting every kind they could think of—roses, tulips, marigolds, orchids, petunias, lilies, mums, daisies, sunflowers, daffodils, hydrangeas—just to name a few.

Hanna, Spencer, and Aria had helped do some of the painting. Aria had liked it most. She had painted three of the larger than life flowers by herself during the evening they had spent on the mural. Spencer painted one while regaling them all with interesting facts about bees and pollination. Hanna had painted one and then grown bored and declared herself DJ. She spent the rest of the time looking through her iPod and playing one song after another, usually with personalized dedications for each song going out to one of the girls. Emily took the opportunity to sit back and really look at the mural while her friends painted for the night.

She always found it difficult to see things like that objectively when she was in the middle of them. She decided, as she watched her friends, that it was turning out even better than she had hoped and figured that she and Charlie could have the mural finished by end of the month if they wanted.

After the girls' two-week visit, Emily felt more subdued. Charlie's exuberance from early in the summer had given way to an even keeled happiness. When they worked, they were quieter, but would often work later into the night than they had in June and with greater care. Emily loved this about she and Charlie's friendship; they could exist as comfortably in silence as they could in boisterous laughter. She cherished those quiet evenings, with nothing but the sound of their brushes against the wall and the ceiling fan gently swaying and making a light knocking noise above them as it spun.

It was during one of those peaceful nights, when Charlie was just starting to paint the pair of horses in the top right corner of the wall, that she looked down at Emily from the chair she was standing on and said, "I don't think you've ever told me your coming out story."

"Really?" Emily asked. "I thought I had."

This was actually a lie. Emily knew perfectly well that she hadn't told Charlie her coming out story. The truth was while everyone knew she was gay, hardly anyone knew her coming out story. She always felt so awkward when she told it, like telling it cheapened the experience somehow. Heterosexuals weren't forced to tell the story of their sexual awakening like it was some epic tale or a mystery that needed to be solved. Without meaning to, Emily began to feel anger seeping into her bloodstream.

"I know it's personal. And probably painful. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Charlie said, reminding Emily that this was one of her best fiends and she had no reason to get so defensive. Charlie just wanted to know more about who Emily was.

"Charlotte, I'm sorry, of course I'll tell you," Emily said, apologizing for something that Charlie didn't even know had happened. She took a few moments to collect her thoughts and then began.

"When I was a sophomore in high school, well, that was when I sort of got serious about writing. So I joined the school newspaper. I had a boyfriend at the time. I was definitely in denial about who I was. Anyway, one of the photogs on the newspaper staff, her name was Lindsay Green. She was a senior and she was so gorgeous, but also like, a little dangerous, I guess. She had tattoos and smoked cigarettes and she was very artsy. She developed her own photographs in the darkroom that the journalism department shared with the art department. Very swoon worthy to a 16 year old me."

"So, on Wednesday nights we did this worknight thing where all the journalism kids would stay after school and work on the paper until 8 or 9 at night. It was a few months into the school year, I think. Our advisor, Mrs. James, she asked me to go to the darkroom to check with Lindsay about some prints she was working on and ask if she was going to some event that night to take more pictures. I can't remember exactly. So I did, and when I walked in, I caught Lindsay making out with one of the other seniors, Haley, she was one of the yearbook editors, actually. God, I was so embarrassed when they looked up and saw me, I just ran out, grabbed my stuff and went home. The next day, I told Mrs. James I'd gotten sick and had to leave."

"And that's when you realized you liked girls?" Charlie asked.

"Not exactly," Emily continued. "I guess I developed a crush on Lindsay. I don't know what else to call it. But like, a terrified crush," Emily laughed. "I mean I would go out of my way to avoid being alone with her. I faked sick to get out of doing stories and going on assignments with her. But I broke up with my boyfriend and I would stare at her in class all the time. Anyway, she figured it out, why I was acting like that, before I did, probably."

"On another one of those Wednesday nights, she cornered me on the way to the bathroom and told me that she knew why I had been acting weird since I walked in on her and Haley and it was because it had turned me on. I sort of half-heartedly denied it and she told me to meet her in the darkroom in an hour and prove it."

"This chick sounds saucy, I like her," Charlie commented. "So did you do it? Did you meet her in the darkroom?"

"Of course, I did. I had no idea what she was going to do, but I knew I had to find out," Emily went on. "So I went to the darkroom and she was there, looking sexy as ever, and she basically implied that if I wasn't gay I could kiss her and it would be no big deal. And that it would prove I hadn't felt anything."

"I wasn't stupid. I knew what she was doing, but I also _did _want to kiss her and I didn't want to look like a chicken, so I walked up to her and kissed her right on the mouth. When I pulled back she was all, 'Well?' and I told her to shut the fuck up and I kissed her again. We kept kissing and ended up making out for an hour or so. And after that I pretty much knew. It just felt right. Like I should've been kissing women my entire life. I came out to my parents the next year. They weren't thrilled about it, but it wasn't horrible. They obviously still loved me. We all adjusted."

"Did you and Lindsay date?" Charlie asked curiously.

"No, we never dated. But we snuck into the darkroom to do…_stuff _almost every Wednesday night. But she graduated that year and we didn't really keep in touch. We were both only interested in each other physically, I think. No. I didn't have my first real girlfriend until I was senior."

"Wow. Innocent little Emily, only in it for the sex?" Charlie joked with her.

"Hey now," Emily shot back, "isn't that what _most _of your relationships are about?"

"Ouch!" Charlie laughed and flicked some paint at Emily.

"You're going to regret that, Charlotte," Emily said reaching for her brush.

It was the last full day of Paige's summer vacation. Grandma Hazel had called her yesterday to make sure she'd be coming over to say goodbye and also mentioned that she had something for her granddaughter.

When Paige arrived, she walked in without knocking. Her grandparents, and now just her grandma, had lived in this house for nearly 50 years. Paige had spent as much time in it as she had her own and to be completely honest, she felt more at home in her Grandma's house. It was her favorite place in the world, despite the strange colors it had always been painted—an abrasive, rusty sort of barn red with peach trim and teal shutters. It definitely stood out. The place was two stories tall with two bedrooms downstairs and one big bedroom upstairs that was her Grandma Hazel's room. She and Tuck had always slept downstairs when they stayed over.

"Grandma?" Paige called out as she walked in.

"Back here!" Hazel called out from the kitchen. Paige went through the living room and into the kitchen. The house had a formal dining room, but it also had what her grandparents called The Breakfast Room, which was attached to the kitchen and had a large table, television, and desk in it, with large windows that look out on the huge backyard. It was where they had most of their meals and it was where Grandma Hazel spent most of her time. She was sitting at the table now, and Paige could see the crossword puzzle from today's paper, the cordless house phone, a deck of playing cards, and a few books in stack spread out on the surface.

"What'll you have, dear?" Hazel asked. "I made some of your favorites this morning," she said grabbing a tin from the kitchen and opening it to reveal chocolate chip cookies stacked with pieces of waxed paper between the layers.

"Thanks, Grandma," Paige said smiling and taking the tin to the table where she sat down.

"Milk?" Hazel asked.

"Yes, please," Paige replied to the woman who taught her manners in the first place.

Hazel came back to the table with two tall glasses of milk and sat down with Paige. She grabbed a couple cookies, too, and the two munched happily for a few minutes before Hazel said, "I was going through some of your grandfather's things last week and I found a couple of books I think he'd like you to have."

"Really?" Paige asked. Tuck was definitely the more literary of the two.

"Well, after what you told me on the 4th, I knew it was important for you to have them," Hazel told her. "I think they'll help."

"Okay," Paige relented, wiping her chocolatey hands on a napkin so she could take the books her grandma was handing to her. Paige looked at them. The first was _Leaves of Grass _by Walt Whitman and the other was a small volume of e.e. cummings' collected poetry.

"Grandpa Frank liked poetry?" Paige asked. "I didn't remember that."

"He did," Hazel continued, "but it was always a bit of a solitary pursuit for him. Not many people knew that about him. He'd read these especially when he had a big decision to make or when he was sad. When he lost his brothers all those years ago, he spent a lot of time reading these. He said to me once—'Hazel, a good poem is like a north star. It always points you home.'"

Paige flipped through the books and saw that Grandpa Frank had underlined things here and there and even noticed his whip-like scrawl in a few of the margins.

"Thank you, Grandma," Paige said earnestly. "I'll read them."

"You're welcome, dearheart. You know, you were a lot like your Grandpa in many ways. Stubborn and foolhardy sometimes, but more determined than anyone I've ever known. When he first started his route," Hazel said, referring to Grandpa Frank's job as a postman for 30 years, "he got lost a few times. So after church on Sundays, for a whole year, he'd drive to different parts of the city, park the car, and walk them til he knew this whole town like blood knows the veins. That's why whenever one of the other postmen was sick, they'd call Frank to pick up his route, because he knew the whole city better than anyone. He never got lost again after that first year. But sometimes, the way he talked, it almost seemed like he missed it—those little adventures he'd go on. It's okay to be lost for a while," she told Paige. "It can even be fun. Make friends with the unknown. Have some adventures."

As she finished, Paige wondered if anyone but grandparents could get away with saying such wise yet cliché things.

On the plane the next day, heading back to Stanford, Paige spent a long time reading the Whitman. The bit she liked most had a few lines her Grandpa had underlined in green ink—

_Do I contradict myself?  
Very well then I contradict myself.  
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)_

**Note: The quote that ends this chapter is from section 51 of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.**


	15. Chapter 15: Fall Again

August seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye for Paige once classes and swimming practice had started back up at Stanford. She felt herself struggling, now that she was no longer at home, to not slip back into old habits. She didn't feel the need to say 'yes' when David asked her out after practice one day, but she did find herself nodding along and agreeing whenever one of her teammates would point out a guy they thought was cute. Paige knew it was stupid. There were two gay girls on the swim team already, but she was terrified that her teammates would suddenly become uncomfortable around her or avoid her in the locker room if they discovered she was attracted to a woman.

That's still where Paige was at—sure she was attracted to Emily, but not sure about much else. Her mind seemed to need to accept this revelation one tiny piece at a time. She still didn't feel sure if she was gay or just attracted to Emily. But she _wanted _to find out, and that made all the difference.

The problem was, she felt like she wanted to figure things out_ with_ Emily. And Emily, of course, was 2000 miles away and probably never wanted to see her again after what Paige had said to her outside that frat party at Vallance.

More and more frequently as September started to pass, Paige found herself daydreaming about Emily instead of paying attention in class. She wanted to go back to Vallance and visit Tuck. She felt every fiber in her being telling her it was the next step in this journey Paige had embarked on. Being back in California away from her family made her feel completely stuck again. She started wishing she had not decided to attend a university so far away from everyone she loved. But whenever that thought came in to her mind, she brushed it away. She couldn't afford to think like that. She'd made her bed (or, in this case, picked her college) and now she had to lie in it.

In mid-September she decided she couldn't ignore the feeling anymore; she could at least visit Vallance. On top of wanting to see Emily again, she and Tuck would be turning 21 on October 11th and she desperately wanted to spend it _with _Tuck. It didn't seem right to celebrate such a monumental birthday apart. They obviously needed to get shit faced _together. _She talked to her coach and teachers and cleared the longer than normal visit with them that she was hoping to take and then called her parents to see if they would buy the tickets for her as an early birthday present.

Emily and Charlie had waited for Jo and Eden to return to finish the last bits of the mural. It only seemed right for each of the people living in the house to contribute. Even Tuck spent an evening putting the finishing touches on the background, which they were filling in with a forest green.

It really was beautiful when it was finished. The words were centered, but at an angle, in the loose but thick letters Emily had fashioned. Then there were the flowers; erupting from the ends of the letters themselves and the air around it, spilling out, like a pot boiling over. At least 50 enormous buds of all different flowers cascaded around and down from the words and poured over the barbed wire fence that ran along the bottom of the mural.

The flowers were the majority of the mural, but up in the right corner, as if far away, Charlie had added in some tree trunks, whose tops would exist somewhere just above where the mural topped out. Standing in the midst of the trees were two horses.

It was odd. Emily was so proud of the mural. So truly in love with how beautifully it had turned out. But almost as soon as they had finished, Emily pictured herself, two years into the future, having to paint over it all. She knew, somehow, that it would be the last thing to go. The last thing Emily would do before she moved out would be to paint over it all. And the thought made her so sad that she had to excuse herself for a moment and fight the feeling down so it wouldn't overwhelm her.

Classes started up again at the very beginning of September. Tuck and Emily were in a class together, Intro to Film, so he came over to the house a few nights a week to watch movies they'd been assigned or just hangout with Emily and the other girls and do homework.

It was one such night. They had just finished watching Hitchcock's _Rear Window_ and were just starting on the other homework they both had.

"Seriously, the worst decision of my life," Tuck said pulling out his Astronomy textbook. "I don't think I can even do any plays or dances this term because this damn class is taking up so much of my time."

"It can't be that bad," Emily said. "It's just stars and planets and stuff."

"You have no idea," Tuck told her opening the book. "I thought it was going to be fun. I could learn about the galaxy and phases of the moon. But its much more math heavy than you would think. And the professor is such a condescending asshole. _Every single class_ he makes it a point to be all 'Okay, here's a question for the Physics majors.' Like the rest of us are too stupid to answer."

Emily made a mental note to never, ever take Astronomy just as Tuck's phone started ringing.

"Saved by the bell," Emily laughed as Tuck gleefully threw his book aside, grabbed his phone off the coffee table and answered it.

"Paigey! Thank god you called," Tuck said answering.

Emily couldn't deny that one of the perks of having Tuck as a friend now was the little updates and things she got to hear about Paige's life, like when she would win a swim meet or ace a test. She didn't want to still care about Paige after what happened, but Emily couldn't help feeling a little proud of her and happy whenever she got wind of those small triumphs in Paige's life.

"Yeah, I'm good," Tuck was saying, "just hanging out with Em. We just watched a movie for class."

Tuck paused and Emily could tell he was listening to his sister.

"Okay, shoot," Tuck responded and then fell silent again. This time he was quiet for much longer, but as he listened his eyes lit up and a huge smile broke across his face.

"Are you serious?!" he said excitedly. "Holy shit! This is going to be the best birthday ever."

Another pause, and then Tuck said, "I'll figure something out, okay? I can't wait to see you!"

As he said this last thing, Emily's stomach dropped. Paige was coming to visit. Emily would be seeing her again, and it sounded like soon because she knew Tuck's birthday was early next month. She felt like she might vomit. While she enjoyed Paige existing in her life peripherally, the thought of standing in the same room with the gorgeous swimmer made Emily uneasy. She was still embarrassed about The Incident and also ridiculously attracted to Paige. She was apprehensively excited, she decided. It was all very confusing.

Tuck hung up the phone soon after that. "Paige is coming to visit for a whole week!" he announced grinning like an idiot. Then he saw the sort of queasy smile Emily was attempting to return to him and said, as he sat back down on the couch, "Oh god, that's probably sort of a mixed bag for you, huh?"

"No, Tuck, it's fine," Emily said, composing herself. For all she knew, she wouldn't even be seeing Paige when she was here. "I'm sure the girls and I can do without you for a week. I'll still see you in class."

Tuck looked at her nervously for a moment before saying, "Actually, I kind of wanted to run an idea by you…"

"What?" Emily said tentatively, stretching the word out more than she normally would.

"Just hear me out," Tuck prefaced his suggestion. "I live in a dorm with a bunch of other guys and not much spare room. All we have is that hard, disgusting, school-issued couch in the suite. And while I don't mind subjecting Paige to that for a weekend…I feel like it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make her sleep on it for an entire week. I'll also have to be in class sometimes and we aren't aloud to make copies of our dorm keys…"

Emily just stared at him. She was going to make him actually say it.

"Well, it would be really nice if Paige could stay somewhere a little homier, maybe with some other ladies around that she could hang out with when I'm busy…"

"Did you have somewhere in mind, Theodore?" Emily asked him, pretending to be oblivious to what he was suggesting.

"Here?" he said in a very meek tone with a hopeful yet apologetic smile on his face.

Emily deflated at the prospect. "Tuck, I don't know. I really doubt Paige would even want to sleep anywhere near me."

"Listen, I know it's hard to believe, but Paige has changed a lot. Over the summer she seemed to…I don't know. It's hard to explain. She just, she's not lying to herself anymore. She's the Paige I remember from when we were kids. I think she's trying to figure her sexuality out. I can't promise it won't be awkward, but I know it won't be, well, like it was last time."

Emily's mind flashed back to the Dickinson poem—_If you were coming in the fall. _Paige seemed destined to creep up on her. She wished, half-heartedly, that she had more time to prepare. For what, exactly, she didn't know.

"Okay," she relented in a dull tone, "but I'll have to run it by the girls."

"You are a fucking angel, you know that?" Tuck said, enveloping her in a bone-crushing hug.


	16. Chapter 16: An Overwhelming Welcome

Paige couldn't believe her luck when Tuck told her that he had arranged for her to stay _in _Emily's house with her and her friends when she visited. It only confirmed for her that this was what she was supposed to be doing. It felt good to be moving forward and toward something again. She was nervous about seeing Emily, but it was an excited nervousness. Paige spent the next three weeks working extra hard in all her classes to get ahead to compensate for the week she would be missing.

By the time the day finally came for her to leave she could barely sit still and she hardly got any sleep the night before. She had once again packed the purple Vallance sweatshirt from her first meeting with Emily. She wanted Emily to remember _that _Paige, which she had spoken so openly about love with, and not the one who had cowardly pushed her away. Maybe seeing Paige in the sweatshirt again would remind her. Paige also took _Leaves of Grass_ with her, which she had been reading religiously each night until she could quote some of the passages. She honest-to-god loved the book, but she also thought being able to quote Whitman might impress Emily.

Tuck met her at the train station again. As this was her third visit now, Paige was starting to get a feel for where things were in town. It was nice to not feel quite so helpless in Solomon.

"Nice sweatshirt," Tuck said in greeting, referring to the Vallance sweatshirt Paige had pulled on when she got off the plane in chilly Chicago. "Maybe you should just transfer here." He wrapped her in a tight hug.

"Fat chance," Paige quipped back. "Do you even have a swimming pool here?"

Tuck looked genuinely puzzled and said, "I have no idea. I'll have to ask Emily."

"Why would Emily know?" Paige asked, secretly pleased that her name had come up so quickly. It felt good just having the other girl's name on her tongue.

"Oh, she works at the fitness center," Tuck explained. "If we do have a pool, it'll probably be somewhere around there, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I'd think so," Paige chuckled, a little baffled that Tuck really didn't know. It was kind of hard to hide a swimming pool.

"You really want to swim while you're here?" Tuck asked.

"It would be helpful if I could at least do a little training while I'm here," Paige answered.

They had been walking as they talked and were a couple blocks away from the train station by now.

"Yeah, let's just ask Emily," Tuck said again.

The twins chatted as they walked, but only half of Paige's brain was listening. The other half was trying to remain calm as she became increasingly more nervous the closer she got to seeing Emily once more.

In the basement at The Log, Emily was faring much worse. She was standing in only her underwear amid an enormous pile of clothes she had put on only to take back off again and toss aside. Tuck had sent her a text 5 minutes ago saying that he and Paige were on their way over. At that point, Emily's nervousness had escalated to panic.

"Jo!" Emily yelled at the top of her lungs. Almost immediately, she heard a body making its way toward the basement door above her.

Jo came down the stairs, took one look at her and said, "You're not even dressed yet? They're almost here."

"Help," Emily said pitifully.

Jo scanned the floor quickly, picked up a pair of light wash jeans, and then said, "Where's that black and grey sort of plaid looking v-neck shirt you have? You look good in that…" The two scanned the floor, and tossed aside some items to see what was under them, until, finally, Jo located it under a frumpy sundress. Just as she handed it to Emily, they heard the front door open. Both girls looked up at the ceiling towards the sound.

"Shit," Emily said, her eyes wide.

"Put these on and come upstairs. And Jesus, Emily, pull yourself together," Jo told her moving back up the stairs.

Emily took her time pulling the clothes on, checked herself in the mirror, and took several deep, steadying breaths. She couldn't even process the idea of socks or shoes in her frenzied state, so she just headed upstairs barefoot.

Paige, for her part, had not realized, until Tuck turned up the walkway to The Log, that she didn't actually know where Emily lived. But as she looked up at the house, her mind flashed back to her first visit and the black-haired girl she'd seen going into this house. It had been Emily, Paige realized.

"She lives in the ugly house?" Paige hissed at Tuck. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Tuck shot her a look that clearly said – DO NOT BE RUDE – before he opened the door a little and called out, "Ladies, we're here!"

As they walked in, Charlie came bounding into the entryway, dragging Eden with her, whose arms she had just forcibly linked on their way to the door.

"You must be Paige," Charlie said smiling and sticking out her hand for Paige to shake. "I'm Charlie, and this," Charlie motioned to Eden who she was still linked arms with, "is my lovely wife, Eden. Welcome to our home!"

"She's joking, obviously, and annoying," Eden said trying, and failing, to free herself from Charlie's arm. "But I am Eden. Hi! Why don't you bring your stuff in the living room?"

From the entryway, Paige could see straight back through hallway that led to the dining room and the kitchen. The stairs were to her left and the doorway to the living room was to her right.

"Okay, sure," Paige said turning with Tuck into the living room, seeing Jo appear from behind a corner in the kitchen as she did.

Paige and Tuck threw her bags down next to the couch and sat down. Jo appeared in the doorway, and raised her right hand to give a small wave of greeting.

"Hey Paige, I'm Jo," she said simply, then as an afterthought, "Emily will be up in a minute her…uh…closet broke."

"So, how was your trip?" Eden asked Paige genuinely.

"Well, its always pretty exhausting, but I crashed on the train for a few hours, so I feel pretty good now," Paige responded. Everyone seemed really nice, but meeting so many new people at once was still overwhelming.

"You better be," Tuck told her excitedly, "because we are going out tonight, just you and me, to buy a drink at midnight!"

"Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, almost," Charlie said. "Now that I see you side by side, I can really see the twin thing. Totally the same shoulders."

Emily walked in the living room at that moment and everyone fell silent. Without exactly meaning to, Paige stood up. They both stared at each other for what felt like about five hours but was actually only five seconds.

"Hey, Em," Paige said carefully. "How've you been?"

Emily had been ready to be polite but also detached. Self-preservation usually won out for her in situations like these. But then Paige had called her "Em," and her heart leapt and her stomach dropped and she knew it was no use. She smiled sweetly at the other girl.

"I've been good, Paige. How about you?"

"I've been working through some stuff," Paige responded cryptically, "but I can't complain."

They fell silent again and Emily could feel everyone else's eyes glancing back and forth between she and Paige.

"Somebody grab a knife," Charlie suddenly said, "cuz we gotta cut this tension."

Paige blushed as Eden smacked Charlie across the arm. "You are tactless," she mumbled almost inaudibly, then said, "I almost forgot! I'll go get your welcome basket!"

Paige's eyebrow arched slightly as Eden ran out of the room. Tuck grabbed the back of Paige's sweatshirt and tugged her back down to the couch. Jo sat down, too, noticing Paige's face and said, "No, she's not kidding. "

Emily was still staring at Paige hungrily. She needed to get a hold of herself. Luckily, Eden burst back in the room clutching a wicker basket, which at least gave Emily as a reason to be looking at Paige so intently.

"Welcome to The Monologue Cabin!" Eden announced, thrusting the basket toward Paige, who took it tentatively.

"Wow, thank you," Paige said, glancing around at the items inside.

"We got you a Vallance water bottle, because you'll probably be needing it while you're here. A pen and notepad with the school crest on it," Eden was pointing to each item as she said this. "Here's a map of the campus and another one of the town. This is your key, on a Vallance keychain, of course, which is yours to keep when you leave. And this is a list of all our phone numbers in case you need anything."

Paige couldn't believe all this. She'd never been welcomed anywhere like this, not even by her own family, except her grandparents.

"Seriously," Jo said, "you can call any of us if you need anything, or if Tuck is at class or something, or you get lost.

"And help yourself to anything in the kitchen," Charlie added. "Eden and I baked a bunch of stuff this morning and went to the store."

"We asked Tuck what kind of food you like," Emily told her, "so hopefully you'll be able to find whatever you need."

Paige looked around at them all and ran her hand back through her hair. She was actually welling up from their kindness. It wasn't something she had expected, at all.

Tuck looked over at Paige and could tell what was going through her mind. He had been similarly floored by how friendly and open these girls had been with him on that first Sunday he had spent with the quartet. He put his hand on Paige's shoulder, squeezed it gently, and smiled at her.

"This is incredible," Paige said looking around the room at them all. "You didn't need to do all this just for me. Thank you."

Then Paige had an idea.

"I was just going to take Tuck out to dinner, but after this, I'd really like to take all of you. As a thank you for letting me crash here for a week."

"Well, I won't say no to that," Charlie replied, "though, we should probably got to Marcelo's, that's the pizza parlor, or you'll be out like 200 bucks."

"True," Jo agreed. "We're big eaters."

"Deal," Paige said laughing.

Paige looked up at Emily and was shocked by the amount of love she could see pouring out of the girl, not for Paige, but for her friends, as Emily looked around at them all, beaming.


	17. Chapter 17: Midnight Snack

After the six of them had dinner, Emily and the girls headed back to The Log and Paige and Tuck went to go drink before going to the bar to buy their first legal drinks at midnight. Emily thought it was silly that they were both so excited at this prospect since they'd obviously both had alcohol before.

"Yes, but now, we can't get arrested for it," Tuck said as he and Paige walked off together towards his dorm.

Back at the house, the other three girls opened some bottles of Smirnoff Ice and decided to play Apples to Apples. Emily played with them and had a good time, but refused to drink anything. She was worried that what happened the last time she was drunk around Paige might happen again. Her body had been buzzing all night already just being near the girl again. She didn't trust herself to even be tipsy and keep her hands to herself when Paige made it back to The Log.

Everyone went to bed around 1 am, Emily making sure to leave the living room lamp on for Paige. It was only about an hour later, though, lying in her bed and trying to sleep, that Emily heard the front door open and close again. Paige sounded a little unsteady on her feet, but Emily didn't think she sounded drunk enough to need assistance. She'd obviously made it home okay. She heard Paige move into the kitchen and begin opening and closing the cabinets and fridge. It sounded like _every single cabinet._ Emily giggled as she imagined a drunken Paige looking through the kitchen. Her laughing was cut short, though, when she heard the basement door open.

Paige was framed in the doorway, in silhouette from the light of the kitchen behind her. Emily watched from her bed as Paige made her way slowly down the first few steps. Then, she stopped and dug into her pocket. Emily wasn't sure what she was doing until Paige's face was suddenly lit up by her phone. Paige tapped the screen a few times and then put the phone up to her ear.

_Why is she calling someone from my bedroom stairs?" _Emily wondered. Then Emily's phone lit up and started buzzing. She sat up and grabbed her phone. It was an unfamiliar number but Emily could guess who it was. _Why am I even answering? _Emily thought as she pressed accept and put the phone to her ear.

"Paige?" Emily answered.

"Emily," Paige whispered. Emily could hear her through phone and standing on the stairs. "It's me, Paige."

"I know," Emily said, unable to stop herself from smiling at Paige's drunkenness. "I can see you on the stairs. Why are you calling me?"

"Because I can't see anything," Paige said, "and I didn't know if you were awake. Are you awake?"

Drunk Paige was pretty adorable, Emily had to admit.

"I am awake," Emily responded. "What's up, Paige?"

"Do you have a toaster?" Paige whispered into her phone. "I couldn't find one."

Emily had been attracted to Paige from the first time she saw her. She had felt a connection with her that first night. But it was in this moment, in this whispered phone call from 20 feet apart, that Emily developed a real, potentially life-altering, crush on Paige McCullers. In that moment, everything deepened for Emily.

"I'm going to hang up," she whispered to Paige. "Stay there, I'm coming to get you."

Emily hung up and set her phone aside.

"Okay," she heard Paige say after she'd already ended the call. "I'll wait for you here."

"I already hung up, Paige," Emily told her in a normal volume.

"Oh, sorry," Paige replied, still whispering. "I'm drunk."

Emily almost loved her, in that moment right there. Almost.

She made her way over to and up the stairs. Paige couldn't see her until they were almost face-to-face.

"Hi!" Paige finally said at a normal volume. "Your room is so dark."

"I know. It makes it really hard to get up in the morning," Emily told her as she gently turned Paige around with a hand on her hip.

"I would stub my toes a lot if I lived down there," Paige told her as she started climbing the stairs.

Emily laughed. "I try to keep things off the floor."

The brightness of the kitchen took some adjusting to once they were back upstairs. When her eyes had adjusted, Emily looked around at all the things Paige had pulled out and put on the counter.

"Jeez, hungry much?" Emily asked, bending down to one of the lower cabinets and pushing aside a large soup pot. The toaster was wedged in behind it. Unless Jo was on one of her Eggo waffle kicks, it didn't get used much.

Emily hadn't thought about it, but she was sort of scantily clad. Her pajamas consisted of some small plaid shorts and a loose teal tank top that matched them. When she turned around, though, Paige was staring at her, her brown eyes traveling up and down Emily's tan skin. Emily cleared her throat, but the alcohol seemed to have disengaged the part of Paige's brain that picked up on subtlety. She simply continued raking Emily's body up and down with her eyes, and, Emily noticed, she even licked her lips a little. Emily had to stop this now or she was going to throw herself at Paige.

"Here's the toaster," Emily said loudly. Paige finally snapped out of it, but not seeming to be embarrassed in the slightest. Emily could see what Tuck meant about how she'd changed.

In fact, as Paige took the toaster from Emily, she actually said, "I like your pajama body. It's good."

Emily felt all the blood from her entire body rush straight down to her core. At least, that's what it felt like. She gulped and moved away quickly.

"So," she said, eager to change the subject, "did you and Tuck have fun?"

"We had a great time! Tuck took me to this place called McGillacuddy's. He thought I'd like it because McGillacuddy is Lucy's maiden name in _I Love Lucy. _And she uses it sometimes, you know, when she's auditioning or doing something Ricky doesn't want her to do," Paige explained chuckling, as she filled a pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. "I got this drink there, it's called The Pink Pussy. Oh. My. God. It was so delicious."

_She is actually trying to kill me, _Emily thought, grabbing the counter behind her for support. Hearing Paige say the word "pussy" had caught her off guard, and had sent her mind to very dirty places. She imagined what it would sound like if Paige were whispering the word into her ear while telling her all the things she wanted to do to her. Emily was becoming ridiculously turned on.

Paige seemed unaware of the effect she was having on Emily. She was now deftly cracking eggs into a bowl using just one hand and tossing the shells into the sink. For a drunk person, her cooking skills were amazing. As Emily watched, as she grabbed a whisk and the bottle of olive oil.

"What are you making?" Emily asked her curiously.

'Eggs Benedict," Paige replied, like it was no big deal. The most sophisticated dish Emily had mastered was a pasta dish her mother had taught her to cook, but she still had to look at the recipe when she made it. Paige seemed to operating on mixture of habit, instinct and legitimate knowledge.

"Are you serious? Isn't that kind of hard?"

"Naaaaah," Paige slurred. "You want some?"

"Yeah, sure," Emily said. She was interested to see if Paige could pull this off being as drunk as she was.

"Is there any ham?" Paige asked. By now she was whisking while drizzling olive oil into the bowl. Her movements were a little sloppy, but they got the job done.

"Hollandaise!" she shouted as she finished the sauce. "Here, taste," she said, dipping her finger into it, and catching Emily, who had been turning around from the fridge with a packet of lunch meat clutched in her hands, unawares.

Paige slipped her finger into Emily's mouth and, on instinct, Emily closed her eyes and sucked the sauce from her pointer finger. Paige let out a small whimper. The two of them locked eyes as Paige slowly removed her finger from Emily's mouth. It was clear, on her face, that in her drunken state, Paige hadn't considered how sexual doing that might be. Somehow, Emily maintained her poker face.

"It's good," Emily said in a low voice. And then, "You're boiling."

Paige seemed frozen on the spot, though. Her body did feel very hot, but how would Emily know that, Paige wondered.

"What?" she croaked.

"The water," Emily said, motioning to the pot on the stove, "it's boiling."

"Oh, right!" Paige said, finally turning away from Emily.

They didn't talk much as Paige poached four eggs. She asked Emily to put the English muffins in the toaster for her. They both seemed to be doing everything they could to pretend Paige's finger hadn't just been sucked clean in Emily's warm mouth.

When the Eggs Benedict was ready, they sat down at the dining room table together to eat. Paige was about to take her first bite when she glanced up and saw the mural for the first time. She had only been as far as the living room before dinner and then it was dark when she came back, and she was drunk. Paige set her fork down and stood up.

"Wow," she said as she ran fingertips lightly over the mural. Paige was one of those people who wanted to touch everything when she visited the art museum. It was just how she experienced things best; seeing didn't suffice for her.

"Did you do this?" she asked Emily.

"Some of it. Charlie and I made it over the summer."

Emily watched as Paige read the poetry on the wall and then stepped back to take in the mural in its entirety.

"I bet this is what your soul looks like," she said to Emily, referring to the poetry. "That's what it means, right? Stepping out of the body."

It was the most wonderful compliment Emily had ever received.

"Paige…" was all she could manage to respond, though.

"I really like it," Paige told her, returning to her chair and digging into her food.

"Thank you," Emily told her as she watched her and began eating, too.

She took the first bite and it was so good that she moaned out loud.

"Oh my god. Where did you learn how to cook like this?" Emily asked as she took her next bite.

"My grandma," Paige replied. "She's seriously the best cook ever. She used to work at this fancy restaurant in Philly when she was younger. She and my grandpa pretty much raised Tuck and me growing up. I mean, by the time we were 10 we had the skill set of an elderly couple. We could cook, garden, play cribbage, crochet…"

"Wait," Emily said, "you crochet?"

"Yeah!" Paige responded. "You want me to make you a scarf? What house are you in?"

"What?" Emily asked, not daring to believe her ears. If Paige liked Harry Potter, she really would be the whole package. She also had this sexy, confident, drunk thing going on that Emily was finding hard to ignore.

"You're a Ravenclaw, aren't you?" Paige said, eyeing her shrewdly. "I'll make you a scarf."

"I'm a Hufflepuff, actually" Emily corrected Paige, a little shyly, as she swooned inwardly. "I love to read, but I'm lousy at math and science. I'm definitely more of an artsy type."

"Oh damn," Paige said staring at Emily, "coming out of left field with the badger. I'm a Gryffindor, through and through."

Having finished eating, Paige leaned back in her chair with her hands behind her head and the smarmiest look her face. Emily burst out laughing.

"Yep, you're definitely cocky enough to be a Gryffindor," she said smoothly.

"You know you like it, Fields," Paige volleyed back.

"Since when do you know my last name?" Emily interjected.

"Since today," Paige said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "It's on my phone list." She waved the paper around for a moment and then put it on the table.

"You're right," Emily said.

"About what?" Paige asked, forgetting what she's said a few moments ago.

"I have a thing for cocky girls. I do like it," Emily said biting her lower lip slightly as she looked Paige up and down. Then she stood up to take her empty plate back into the kitchen.

It was a good thing, too, that Emily walked away, because Paige was blushing so hard she felt like she might die of heat stroke. But she also felt like she could fly. She was so happy. Emily Fields was flirting with her. Emily didn't hate her after what happened last spring. Paige still had a chance. Not all was lost.


	18. Chapter 18: Surprise Pong

When Emily woke up on Saturday morning, she told herself that she needed to do a better job of keeping her distance from Paige. Flirting with her last night had been dangerous. Paige had made it clear last spring that Emily's advances were not welcome and while Paige may very well have had a change of heart, Emily was still wary of reading the signals wrong again. She wasn't going to look like a fool twice. Emily promised herself that she would treat Paige as a friend and nothing more.

"Hopefully, Paige won't feel the need to stick her finger in my mouth today," Emily said out loud while she was getting dressed.

Upstairs, the house was pretty quiet. The girls usually slept late on the weekends and it was only 9 am. Eden was usually the earliest riser among them and she rarely got up before 9:30 on Saturday and Sunday. Emily could hear soft voices coming from the living room, though. She walked down the hall, thinking maybe Tuck was over already, not wanting to waste any valuable birthday time with Paige. But as Emily neared the living room, it became clear that it was only Paige's voice speaking. Emily realized she must be on the phone.

"Yeah, I'm staying with Tuck's friend, Emily. Well, I guess she's my friend, too," Paige was saying.

Emily knew she shouldn't eaves drop but the sound of her own name made it nearly impossible to walk away.

"She's the one I told you about," Paige spoke again. "You'd like her. She's a real spit-fire, just like you!" Paige laughed at that. _Who is she talking to? _Emily wondered. "Of course not! No one could ever replace you."

There was silence again and then Paige said, "He's supposed to be over in about an hour so I should probably go get ready. Thank you for the birthday call. I love you, Grandma. Go wake up Tuck now!" She laughed again, and Emily moved away back to the kitchen so that Paige wouldn't catch her listening.

Emily's heart had melted a little and she felt her previous resolve about Paige weakening. The girl had been so sweet on the phone just now. Emily's brain was in overdrive, trying to figure out what the hell it could mean that Paige had told her Grandma about her. She had definitely been staring at Emily's body last night, too. _Maybe she has changed her mind about me, _Emily thought. She was so distracted by these thoughts that when Paige put a hand on her shoulder, she jumped and the cereal from the box she was holding shot in the air and fell onto the floor. Emily spun around quickly with an embarrassed smile on her face.

"Hi," Paige laughed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Hey. Good morning," Emily stuttered out. "You didn't scare me."

"So, you meant to throw cereal all over the floor?"

"The weather report called for showers of Frosted Flakes," Emily shrugged, immediately regretting the lame joke. She made a noise halfway between a chuckle and groan.

Paige laughed and, spotting the broom hanging on the wall by the pantry, grabbed it and began to sweep up the cereal.

"You're really cute when you're nervous," Paige told her, smiling widely. Now that she was sure she still had a chance with Emily, Paige had no qualms about flirting with her.

Emily grinned, her heart speeding up, but looked away and cleared her throat.

"You're up early," she said to Page as she successfully poured some Frosted Flakes into a bowl.

"My grandma called to wish me a Happy Birthday," Paige explained. "But I'm glad, Tuck's going to be over soon anyway. I think he's borrowing a car from someone so we can drive around town and go see a movie or something before we party with you guys later."

"Oh yeah, Happy Birthday!" Emily told her enthusiastically. "Stay right there!"

Emily took off down the stairs and reappeared just a few seconds later.

"Here," she said, handing a blue envelope to Paige with her name written on the front. Paige noticed she had another one that said "Tuck" still clutched in her hands.

Inside was a card in which Emily had written, "Happy 21st! Hope you have a great week while you're here. Fondly, Emily."

Emily had a very hard time figuring out how to sign off when she'd written the card. She thought "Fondly" sounded cold and stilted, but she hadn't been able to come up with anything better. She couldn't very well sign it "Wish you were gay, Emily."

"Thank you," Paige told her. "You guys are like the nicest people ever here. Kinda makes me wish I hadn't gone to Stanford."

"What do you mean?" Emily asked. "You haven't met any nice people at Stanford?"

"I have, its just such a big school. I feel swallowed up by it. And, like I told you when we first met, I'm not the best at making friends," Paige explained. "Seeing you with your friends, seeing how close you all are, it's kind of amazing. I've never had friends like that."

"Well, I count myself lucky," Emily told Paige honestly. "Those girls are my family. Do you want some cereal?" she asked then.

"No, I hate cereal," Paige responded. "I'll just make some toast."

"Do you need me to find the toaster for you again?" Emily teased. She couldn't help but flirt with Paige a little, not when Paige was so obviously flirting with her.

Paige blushed. "Okay, I deserve that. But tell me that wasn't the best Eggs Benedict you've ever had," Paige challenged her.

"It was really good," Emily conceded. "I especially like the hollandaise…" They locked eyes and Emily moved toward Paige a few steps. Paige was just opening her mouth to say something when Eden walked into the kitchen.

"Happy Birthday!" she said and promptly began singing Happy Birthday to Paige while handing her another card.

Paige and Emily didn't get another chance to talk by themselves again during the day. Soon Charlie and Jo were up, too (probably woken by Eden bellowing out every birthday themed song she knew), and the house was buzzing with plans for that night and what they should do to celebrate the twins' birthday. Then Tuck showed up and chatted with them for awhile before he and Paige headed out for the day.

Emily spent her time getting her homework for the weekend out of the way so she could party that night without having it hanging over her head. Then she went to the liquor store with Jo, who had turned 21 over the summer, to buy all the alcohol they would need for the night.

It had been decided that to begin the evening's birthday celebrations, they would play Surprise Pong at The Log. Surprise Pong was like Beer Pong but with hard alcohol and mixed drinks in the cups instead of beer. It gave Charlie a chance to make up new mixed drinks and it was also just fun to guess what you were consuming. It also got them drunker than when they used beer. Charlie had thought of Surprise Pong one night when Eden complained about how much she hated the taste of beer. After that first night, everyone agree it was far superior to Beer Pong.

Tuck and Paige returned from the movie around 7 pm with their cheeks flushed.

"I had to return the car across campus and then we walked back here. It's getting chilly out there," Tuck explained, rubbing his arms a little.

Emily was looking at Paige, though, as she removed her leather jacket. She couldn't help but wonder if Paige would look similarly flushed after a good, hard fuck. _You're not even drunk yet! _Emily scolded herself immediately after the thought entered her mind.

"Should we eat something before we start playing?" Jo asked everyone as they joined she and Charlie, who were setting up the Surprise Pong game, in the kitchen.

"Why don't we just have some snacks while we play?" Emily suggested. She was feeling eager to start drinking so she would at lest have an excuse for shamelessly flirting with Paige and imaging her in various stages of undress.

She had mostly given up on trying to be nothing more than friendly to the other girl. She had never felt more drawn to someone and if Paige was changing her tune, Emily was more than happy to sing along.

"I call first game!" Emily announced. "Who wants to play me?"

"I'll play you," Paige said from the doorway. "I've never played before, though, so you'll have to give me a quick run down."

"It's simple," Tuck said. "You just stand at the end of table, shoot a ping pong ball and try to get it into one of the other person's cups. If you make it, they drink the cup and take it off the table. Whoever clears all the other person's cups first, wins."

"Alright!" Paige said, bouncing up and down and shaking her hands out like she was about to play a game of basketball or something more athletic than pong. "Let's do this, Fields. Bring it on!"

"It's cute, you actually think you have a chance," Emily taunted, giving Paige a pitying smile.

"Oh, Tuck forgot a couple things," Jo said. "If you make a shot, you get to keep going until you miss. You can also yell or do whatever you want to distract the other person while they're shooting. Except for flashing. That was outlawed after Charlie broke the light cover last winter."

Paige took the first shot and missed pretty badly, probably because she was now imaging Emily flashing her from the other side of the table.

"That's okay. That's okay. Shake it off," Tuck told her. "It was your first go. You got this, Paigey!"

Emily lined up on the other side of the table. She sunk her first shot. Paige drank. Then Emily made her second shot, as well.

"Yeah, Em, wipe the smile off her face!" Charlie shouted, throwing a fist into the air.

Everyone had gathered around the table to watch now. She and Eden were sipping on some drinks on the same side of the table.

"Kill her, Em!" Eden yelled, as Emily sunk her third shot. Eden was vicious in any kind of competition.

Emily smiled smugly as Paige threw back her third cup.

"I forgot to tell you," she said, her voice thick with gloating, as Paige put the cup aside. "No one has ever beaten me at pong."

Paige shook her head, but she was smiling. "Damn. I'm in trouble aren't I?"

Emily missed the next shot and Paige finally landed one. As much as she wanted to win, Emily also wanted to drink, so she didn't mind.

Paige ended up putting up a better fight than Emily thought she would, but she still won by four cups. By the time the game was over, Paige was feeling sufficiently buzzed. Emily wanted to catch up, so she stepped away from the table and poured herself one of the drinks Charlie had mixed (Licorice Knuckles, she'd named it). She took a long swig of it, and thought she caught a taste of peppermint schnapps.

"Taking your loss pretty hard, huh?" Paige asked coming over.

"Excuse me?" Emily said, both of her eyebrows rising. "I wiped the floor with you!"

"Only because I let you win," Paige said, leaning casually against the counter. "You look really pretty tonight, by the way," she added taking a sip of her own drink.

"Paige McCullers, are you flirting with me?" Emily asked, expecting a snarky or sarcastic comment in response.

"Yes, I am," Paige responded, looking hard at Emily.

"Well," Emily said, a knot tightening low in her stomach at the look Paige was giving her, "glad we have that cleared up."

Emily's heart was beating wildly. She was afraid to move or even breathe. She didn't want to fuck this moment up somehow. The two drank in silence for a few minutes. Tuck and Jo were playing pong now, and Eden had pulled Charlie over to the open area near the stove. They were dancing together some music Jo had put on earlier. Charlie was spinning Eden around and around until she almost fell over, but Charlie caught her and hoisted her back to her feet, both of them in stitches of laughter.

Paige and Emily watched them, laughing a little as well. Then Paige scooted closer to Emily and leaned into her ear. "Are they together?" she asked obviously referring to Eden and Charlie.

Emily turned around, Paige doing the same and facing the counter, so they could talk without the others overhearing them. "No," Emily said, "they're not together. They're just in love."

"What?" Paige took the opportunity to lean closer to Emily again. She liked the response she got, hearing Emily's breath hitch slightly. "What does that even mean?"

They were so close to each other by this point that their shoulders were touching. Paige was leaning forward slightly, her forearms resting on the counter. Emily leaned forward to match Paige's position and began to run her fingers very lightly, tentatively, over the top of Paige's hand, which was palm down, as she spoke.

"Well, none of us really talk about it," Emily said in low voice. "I mean, we're all close, but it's different for Charlie and Eden. Like, Eden's the only person who can take care of Charlie when she's sick. And Eden loses it whenever Charlie gets drunk and wanders off because she's so worried about her. And Charlie goes to see Eden every time she performs. Not just like she sees all her plays, but like, every single performance. She's there every night the show runs. I think they have more conversations with their eyes than the rest of us have with our mouths."

It was strange to say it, but this was the most intimate moment Paige had ever experienced—here, leaning over the counter together with Emily who was speaking softly and tracing the curves of her hand.

"Are they sleeping together?" Paige asked, daring to slowly turn her hand over so it was now palm up. She gulped audibly as Emily continued to run her fingers along Paige's open palm.

"I don't know," Emily told her. "Does it matter?"

"Um…yes?" Paige answered, struggling to concentrate on their conversation.

Emily was quiet for a few moments. She seemed to be lost in the lines on Paige's palm as she traced them one by one and then slowly trailed her fingertips up to her wrist and forearm. Paige let out an audible sigh then, which Emily could have sworn she heard her own name in.

"Why?" Emily said, and went on without giving Paige a chance to answer. "Don't you think the scope of human relationships is stupidly limiting? They can be in love and have sex or they can be in love and not have sex. I mean, it's like that cliché saying—Eskimos have 20 different words for snow—or something like that. "

"You lost me with the Eskimo bit," Paige told her, raising her hand slightly and slowly moving it against Emily's, sliding her fingers back and forth between her own. They weren't holding hands. It was more akin to fucking with the constant motion of it. It baffled Paige that something so simple could feel so erotic. She was getting wet from this slow movement of their hands against each other.

"I'm just saying, whatever relationship that Charlie and Eden have, there isn't a name for it. And there doesn't need to be. You just want to label it for your own comfort. So you can understand it. I don't mean _you Paige_. Everyone does it. We have a natural desire to understand and catalogue everything in the world. But a lot of things, I think, they don't fit into our understanding. Maybe our brains are too small. I mean, love is kind of baffling even in defined relationships. It rarely makes sense. But we can still accept things even if we don't understand them."

"You get really philosophical when you drink," Paige told her, trying to keep her cool, even though she was breathing heavily at this point.

"You get really nosey," Emily said, her voice dripping with want. She realized she needed to stop this or she was going to kiss Paige in front of everyone. And she didn't want to do that. She wanted Paige to come to her this time.

"We should get back over there," she said, pressing her palm flat against Paige's for just a moment, and then moving back towards the pong table.


	19. Chapter 19: On the Catwalk

A couple hours later, Emily was still unbeaten at Surprise Pong, but Paige had also managed to win her first game as well. Tuck had challenged Paige to a game and Emily had acted as her coach, coming to stand behind her to fix her stance or point out where she should be aiming; basically, using any excuse to touch her. The best parts of the game, in Emily's opinion, was the cocky grin Paige got on her face every time she made a shot and the hug she gave Emily when she sank the last shot to win.

"Maybe you should coach me in some other areas," Paige said suggestively to Emily. "I take direction really well, don't you think?"

"The things I can do, Paige," Emily said with a sly smile, "they can't be taught."

It was a relief, Emily thought, just to be able to flirt with Paige. Even if it was all that ever happened between them, at least she could feel Paige pushing back against her, even if it was just with her words. In many ways, it was even more satisfying than dancing with the Paige at the frat party. Emily felt that easing into it this way was better; she didn't want to push too hard and scare Paige off again.

A couple hours later, Charlie demanded more substantial food, so the six of them wandered into town and picked up some Chinese food to go. Rather than just take it back home to eat it, Eden had the idea that they should take it to the main stage at the Lincoln Center, since nothing was being performed this weekend, and eat there.

"Are you sure this is okay?" Jo asked as they all walked into the empty theater and Charlie went back to the booth to turn on the lights. "It feels like we're breaking into a church."

"Come on, Jo, we have keys for a reason!" Eden shouted as she ran down to the stage and bounded up the stairs.

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure this is not that reason," Jo countered.

"Don't worry so much, it'll be fine," Emily told her. "The worst thing that'll happen is we'll get kicked out by one of the janitors."

Charlie emerged and looked down at Eden, who was happily reclining center stage and had started to eat.

"Those better not be my motherfucking egg rolls, Edie! Goddamit!"

Eden screamed as Charlie sprinted toward the stage. She took off running somewhere backstage, closely pursued by Charlie. Jo couldn't help but laugh at their antics and relax. Tuck, Paige, Emily and Jo settled themselves on the stage, pulled out all the food, and happily dug in. The other two eventually reappeared and joined them.

Emily didn't feel especially hungry. Her nerves were causing her stomach to churn. She did her best to eat a few of the Crab Rangoon she had ordered and then offered the rest to Charlie to replace her missing eggs rolls. Then, Emily had an idea.

"Hey, do you guys want to go up on the grid?" she directed the question at Tuck and Paige since the other three went up there quite frequently. Jo hung the lights for most of the main stage productions and often enlisted the rest of them to help. "I'll give you a little behind the scenes action," she said waggling her eyebrows at the twins.

"No, thank you, there's a reason I prefer to be _on _the stage," Tuck said emphatically, shaking his head. Then he clarified, "_I_ _do not do heights._"

"Well, he does heights, he just usually pukes," Paige laughed. "I'm up for it, though," she added looking at Emily and smiling.

"Great!" Emily said, her pulse quickening as she became even more excited at the prospect of some alone time with Paige. "Can I borrow your keys?" she asked Jo as she stood up.

Jo tossed her the keys and she and Paige moved off stage left into the dark backstage of the large theater.

"Don't fall!" Charlie shouted at their retreating backs.

"So, how drunk are you?" Emily asked Paige. "It is a little dangerous. I mean, I've always thought it would be kind of poetic to die on your birthday, but I think 21 is a little too young."

"You are kind of an odd duck, Emily Fields," Paige chuckled. "I'm only like a three, though. Drunk enough to make me bolder than normal, not enough to make me wobbly. I think that beef and broccoli soaked up some of the alcohol in my system."

"Perfect," Emily grinned, feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.

The two had reached an area that was caged off, literally, with a metal, crosshatched box that was as large as a dorm room. Paige could see a work area with light gels, wires, ropes, and what appeared to be small spotlights stacked on some shelves. The cage also encased the bottom of a towering spiral staircase that reached up into the high, dark ceiling. Paige couldn't help feel a little nervous as Emily unlocked the large padlock attached to the cage's door and then followed her as they began to ascend the tightly wound turns of the staircase. At the top, Paige leaned over the railing to take in just how high up they were and gulped.

"You okay?" Emily questioned, putting her hand of top of Paige's.

The truth was, the height wasn't what was making Paige nervous, it was the beautiful girl stroking Paige's hand gently with her thumb. Paige glanced down at their two hands and let out a long, steadying breath before looking back up at Emily. She nodded in answer to Emily's question.

"Be brave, Paige," Emily whispered and pulled her gently by the hand onto the narrow walkway that led away from the stairs into the black, exposed ceiling of the building. It was dark, but not pitch black. There was a chink of light coming from a source further along the walkway, and Paige and Emily began making their way towards it, moving in the direction of the back of the theater, away from the stage. The walkway they were on looked like it continued the length the whole auditorium. Emily confirmed this.

"If we kept walking that way, we would come out in the booth," Emily explained. "You know, where the big control board is for the lights and sound. That's where the stage manager sits to call the show."

"You mean where they give all the cues and stuff, into that headset?" Paige asked, her mind heralding back to some things she had learned in her 8th grade Communications class. She was genuinely fascinated being up here, seeing the bowels of the theater exposed like this and getting to see how it all worked.

"Exactly," Emily told her, smiling. "But we are going this way," she nodded to the walkway to their left. It was different from the one they were on because they were moving into the drop ceiling of the theater now and the curved white of its material swooped away from the walkway on either side. It looked like rolling hills of snow underneath an inky sky, which was the true, unfinished ceiling of the building. This walkway was slightly curved, and its end was hidden from view by the bend. Paige noticed, as they moved along this walkway, that there was a about a foot gap running along its bottom on their left. She looked down and could see directly into the theater below. They were situated, it seemed, a ways back from the stage, slightly ahead of the middle of the seats for the audience. Paige could see Tuck and others were still lounging on the stage, laughing and talking.

"This is where we hang the lights," Emily explained, "on the pole here." She pointed to a long, black pole that was running along vertically with the base of the walkway.

"This is really cool," Paige said, kneeling down so she could see out of the gap by their feet a little better.

Emily smiled at her and leaned against the railing, facing out into one of the sides where the ceiling seemed to run on forever, a dim valley rolling away into the darkness. "It's one of my favorite places on campus," she said. "It feels like a different world up here. Even when rehearsal is going on, it's still quiet up here, like it's a million miles away."

Paige stood up then. She knew this was it, the most private, isolated moment she could have hoped for. Time was hanging around them like a mirage. She felt like she had stepped into a frozen snow globe. Paige steeled herself and moved behind Emily, placing her arms on either side of the other girl, gripping the railing, but maintaining an inch or so of space between their bodies.

Emily made to turn around and face Paige, but Paige pressed her body flush against her to stop the movement.

"I need to say something to you," Paige told her, her breath moving against Emily's ear. "But I don't think I can get it out if you're looking at me."

"Okay," Emily told her simply, aware of every bit of her body that Paige was pressing against with her own. She could feel Paige's heart pounding steadily against her right shoulder blade. Emily's hand tightened around the railing until her knuckles were white. Surely, she thought, this kind of prolonged anxiety must have far reaching effects.

She heard Paige let out a long breath and then a small cough. She was clearly nervous, too. Emily waited quietly for Paige to speak, but there was an emotional storm raging in every inch of her body. Emily focused on her eyes blinking, the slight flex of her jaw, her toes balling inside of her Converse: the impossibility of stillness when it came to Paige.

"Emily, I'm so sorry," Paige began slowly, her voice heavy, "for the way I acted last spring at the frat party. It's just…being around you…it made me feel out of control. Like a runaway train, or like a car with the breaks cut. I was so scared. I felt like, if I didn't stop what was happening that I was gonna crash."

Emily felt Paige shake her head slightly behind her, catching Emily's hair in the air that was stirred by it. She seemed to be wrestling with herself, to go on, so Emily kept her silent yet charged vigil.

"You weren't crazy that night," Paige suddenly exhaled the statement, all at once in a rushed whisper. "I was…I _am_…attracted to you. I've been trying to figure out everything since then. I'm still not sure if I'm gay…or, if I am, I can't quite say it out loud yet. But I did want to kiss you that night. I still do."

Emily had her eyes closed. She wanted to drown in this moment and never die. She was using all her self control now to not spin around, because all she wanted to do was turn and pin Paige against the other railing and kiss her breathless.

Instead of that, she said, very quietly, "Can I turn around now?"

"Yeah," Paige muttered and eased her body off of Emily's slightly so she could turn. Paige left her hands where they were, though.

When Emily was facing Paige, who seemed on the verge of hyperventilating, she said, "I'm sorry, too. I never should have walked off and left you there. I should have been more understanding. I'm not the most patient person. And for the record, you can kiss me whenever you want."

They had been looking each other right in the eyes as Emily said this last part. Paige smiled, relief cascading over every inch of her body and pouring off of the catwalk into the seats far below them.

"Okay," she said quietly, momentarily paralyzed by the enormous weight that had left her. "Okay," she said again, but this time, louder and in a more sure tone. When she looked back up, she could see in Emily's eyes, seductive black holes that they were, that she was waiting for Paige to make the first move.

Paige bit her bottom lip as she glanced down at Emily's lips and then she moved her right hand to brush a strand of Emily's hair behind her ear. After that, Paige gently cupped the side of Emily's head in her hand, leaned in, and kissed her.

Paige had never experienced anything like it. It felt like the sun rising in the morning or leaves falling from the trees in autumn. It was just so natural and so right. Her entire body hummed with the perfection of it as her lips moved languidly against Emily's, and a bit of the contented hum escaped her lips and slipped into Emily's eager mouth.

In Emily's case, she was already familiar with the rightness of it, which she had felt the first time she had kissed a girl. But she had never been kissed by anyone the way Paige was kissing her now. It was so sweet and so honest. It was the first time someone had kissed her for the pure joy of kissing her and not because they wanted the kiss to lead to other things. Paige took her breath away. And as they kissed, Emily's hands roamed over Paige's back and up into her hair. She could feel Paige smiling into the kiss, and Emily pictured the two of them, inexplicably, as if they were standing between two huge bookends, as tall as the girls themselves.

When Paige pulled away, she ran her finger over Emily's wet, smiling lips and Emily kissed her fingers.

"Please, don't stop," Emily told her as she wrapped both arms around Paige's neck and pulled her back in, sliding her tongue into Paige's mouth as their lips met again.

They kissed for as long as they dared up on the catwalk, high above the seats they had first met in a year ago, protected from everything and everyone by the bookends in Emily's mind.


	20. Chapter 20: Inside the Actors Studio

On Sunday, Paige woke up on the couch to smell of pancakes cooking and voices filtering through the air from the kitchen. She smiled, a huge grin, before she opened her eyes, remembering what had happened the night before. Her 21st had definitely been her favorite birthday so far.

When she walked into the kitchen, she saw Emily sitting on the counter, still in her pajamas, and Eden minding the pancakes on the stove. They were both sipping cups of coffee. Emily's face lit up when she saw Paige walk in.

"Hi," she said, her face breaking into a soft smile. "How'd you sleep?"

"Good," Paige told her. "Really good. I just realized, though, I haven't showered in two days. Are there towels somewhere I could use?"

"Oh, god, yeah. Sorry! We should have showed you that stuff as soon as you got here. You can use some of mine," Emily said putting her coffee down and hopping off the counter. Paige couldn't help but notice she didn't seem to be wearing a bra. She followed Emily into the bathroom feeling suddenly sheepish and slightly aroused.

No one had warned her about this strange no-man's land that existed between the first kiss and the second and Paige had no idea how to navigate this space between intimacies. Should she kiss Emily? Should she say something about last night? Suddenly, all the surety she felt coursing through her body last night, all the confidence she had fallen asleep with, had been replaced with doubt, insecurities, and questions. Her brain started to spin wild thoughts one after the other.

_What if I wasn't a good kisser?_

_What if Emily doesn't want to kiss me again?_

_What is she's wishing it never happened?_

They had entered the bathroom now and Emily was saying something.

"—are mine, so feel free to use those and if you didn't bring shampoo or you forgot something," she pulled back the shower curtain, "everything in the left corner is mine. But I'm sure Jo wouldn't mind if you used her stuff. So really, just go crazy," Emily finished, laughing a little at her last statement. She turned to look at Paige and saw her frozen in the doorway with a stiff expression, like she was afraid to get close to her.

"Paige, are you alright?" she asked, worried.

"Yeah, I just really need a shower, ya know? " Paige said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm gonna grab a change of clothes," she muttered and moved quickly towards the living room.

Emily was left alone in the bathroom, the shower curtain still clutched in her right hand. Her face fell as she watched Paige practically run out of the room, wondering if Paige was reneging after what happened between them. Paige was like some skittish wild animal that was spooked any time Emily made a sudden movement. As she walked back to the kitchen, Emily remembered something her father had told her once, when he was teaching her how to shoot a gun.

"You're a great shot, Emmy," he'd told her proudly, "but you wouldn't be much of a hunter."

The statement had confused her when he'd said it, but she was starting to understand what he meant.

A few minutes later, after grabbing her clothes, Paige shut herself in the bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet, silently berating herself. Why had no one ever bothered to tell her it took more courage to kiss someone the second time than it did the first?

The day went by slowly. Paige left with Tuck soon after her shower. The twins went to a coffee shop and then wandered around the quaint shops that lined Main Street. For lunch they got hot dogs from a lonely food cart. And in the afternoon, they happened upon a tour that was about to begin for one of the old churches that was right off of the town square and decided to check it out.

Although Paige had not been attending church regularly once she started at Stanford, she still had a deep love of church buildings. When she and Tuck were growing up, her father would sometimes do a pulpit exchange with other churches around Pennsylvania. This meant he would switch churches with another pastor for one Sunday to preach and lead services. She and Tuck would take the opportunity to thoroughly explore the churches they visited. Those hours had been some of Paige's favorite times—finding strange doors and staircases, forgotten choir lofts, and dark nurseries filled with ancient toys. Once, they'd even climbed a ladder hidden in a small closet and found themselves in the stone bell tower of a particularly large church.

It was lucky that they happened on the tour and that the tour guide encouraged everyone to look around the building on their own after the guided portion was over. It gave Paige a direct route back to herself, to something sure and true about her identity. Wandering around the church with Tuck by her side felt so safe and so familiar that she wondered how she could have been in such a tailspin over Emily only that morning. _This is what it must mean to center yourself, _Paige thought, having never quite understood the term before.

She and Tuck were wandering around the church basement, looking at some intricate tapestries that depicted the Stations of the Cross, when Paige cleared her throat.

"So, I kissed Emily last night," she said nonchalantly, and then added, "a lot," just for good measure.

"I knew it!" Tuck shouted, then clapped his hand over his mouth, remembering where they were. "Charlie owes me 20 bucks," he said quietly but smugly.

"You took bets on us?" Paige said incredulously. "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess. Charlie didn't think I'd do it?" she asked.

"Actually, Charlie bet that you were going to fuck on the cat walk," Tuck said laughing. Then glanced back over at Paige with a slightly worried look on his face. "Wait, you didn't, right?"

"Dude! No. What is wrong with you?"

"Sorry," Tuck said. "Just checking. But you kissed her? How was it?"

"It was…"Paige stopped walking in her search for the words to describe what it felt like to kiss Emily. She couldn't contain the smile on her face. "It was the most perfect thing that's ever happened to me."

"Oh my god, Paigey," Tuck said. "I've never seen you like this before! I mean, look at you. You're giddy!"

Paige was blushing hard and looking down at the ground.

"I really like her, Tuck. Like more than just kissing her." She looked up and then shook her head in frustration. "God, why isn't there a grown-up word for 'crush?'"

Tuck was grinning as widely as Paige was now. "I'm so proud of you," he told her.

"Thanks," Paige responded.

When they got back to The Log, all four girls were in the living room. They were talking loudly, except for Emily, who seemed to be the only one still eating dinner. She was clutching a bowl of soup and sitting cross-legged on the couch. Paige tried to catch her eye, but she was either lost in thought, or purposefully avoiding Paige, and didn't even look up when she and Tuck came in the room and everyone else greeted them.

"Where have you two been all day?" Jo asked.

Tuck gave the girls a quick rundown of their day and then Eden regaled them with an update on the mime show she and two other students were putting together. Still, Emily didn't look up from her soup.

"So what should we do tonight?" Charlie asked the group at large. "Besides drink."

"Don't you think you drink a little too often, Charlotte?" Eden asked her in a scolding tone.

"Probably, but I'm not going to worry about that tonight. Now, somebody think of something for us to do. I'm bored!"

"You're like a toddler, sometimes," Eden told her. Then her eyebrows shot up with an idea. "Ooooh! Em, can we play Inside the Actors Studio?"

"Yeah! Come on, Emily, please?" Jo added and soon as Eden made the suggestion.

Charlie was literally bouncing up and down on the couch, just chanting, "Please! Please! Please!"

Whatever this game was, it seemed to hinge entirely on Emily's assent to its taking place. This piqued Paige's interest in it automatically. It had also, finally, pulled Emily out of her soup reverie, which Paige also appreciated.

"No, guys, come on. It's so embarrassing," Emily said. "Not when we have guests." Her eyes were pleading with her friends to just drop it, but none of them cooperated.

"But it's the most fun game ever!" Charlie insisted. "Tuck and Paige will love it!"

"Okay, one of you needs to tell us what's going on," Tuck said loudly.

"Inside the Actors Studio is a show on…Bravo, I think," Jo began to explain. "But it's also this game that Emily made up, based on the show. The show is basically just this guy, his name's James Lipton, and he has famous actors into the Actors Studio to interview them about their life and acting career. But he's really ridiculous, the way he talks to them. He's like kissing their ass but with complete reverence. He just has this weird air. You gotta watch it sometime. Anyway, Em does a great James Lipton, and she interviews each of us like we're famous actors and we have to drink every time she makes us break character and laugh. It's so much fun. You're going to love it. "

"No, they're not," Emily interrupted, "because I'm not going to do it."

Finally, Paige caught Emily's eyes. She tried to apologize telepathically for being weird that morning. And she might have succeeded because Emily suddenly let out a huff amid the protests that had erupted from her friends' mouths.

"FINE. Someone get the chairs and the drinks. I need to change," Emily relented.

"Yay!" Charlie shouted as Emily left the room. "You two get the chairs," she said to Jo and Eden, who both looked elated, "and I'll get the drinks."

When Jo and Eden came back they were carrying two of the chairs from the dining room, which they positioned in front of the TV, angled towards each other slightly.

"What exactly did Em go to change into?" Paige asked.

"Her costume," Eden said, as if it were obvious.

"Just wait, you'll see," Jo told her grinning.

A few minutes later, Charlie came in with a pitcher of something she had just mixed up and a stack of plastic cups. "The Alabaster Albatross," she said, naming the new drink as she set it down.

In the distance, they heard the basement door open and shut. "She's coming," Eden whispered excitedly.

A few seconds later, Emily walked back into the room. Until that moment, Paige had no idea exactly how hot a woman in men's clothing could be. Emily had put on a blue, stiff collared, button-up shirt with a black tie, black pants, and matching black suit coat. All of it fit her very nicely. None of it was baggy on her, but it wasn't too tight either. Paige wondered where on earth she had purchased the outfit. She also had on thick, square-rimmed glasses and she'd tied her hair back into a tight bun.

The moment she walked into the room, the air changed. Emily was completely in character. She had adopted a stiffer posture and was looking at them all appraisingly. The other girls quieted down immediately and took their seats on the sectional.

"Welcome," Emily said in a low, haughty tone, "to The Actors Studio. For those of you who are joining us for the first time tonight, the rules are simple. If at any point you laugh or answer any of my questions with anything but the respect that I, James Lipton, am due, you must drink. I will interview each of you in turn. Follow my lead. Shall we begin?"

Paige, who knew she would do _anything_ Emily told her to do while wearing that suit, saw that the other girls had raised their glasses along with Emily. Paige and Tuck quickly grabbed cups of their own.

"We always begin with a toast to me, James Lipton: National Treasure, Eternal Interviewer, and Seer of All Movies."

Paige had to stifle a snort. Emily was really committing to this.

"To James Lipton," they all chorused and drank.

"Now," Emily said, sitting down on one of the dining room chairs and pulling a thick stack of note cards from her breast pocket, "let's begin with the truly incomparable, dream weaver herself, Ms. Charlotte Cole."

Charlie stood up solemnly and approached the other dining room chair while Jo and Eden applauded. As she sat down, she said, "James, it is so nice to see you again."

"Charlotte, please, the pleasure is all mine," Emily responded, placing her hand over her heart and shaking her head. "You've starred in three television shows, 14 made-for-TV movies, and won five Oscars. You are the only woman to ever win an Oscar for a movie that appeared on the Hallmark Channel. Your talent is beyond anything mere mortals have experienced ever before or ever will again. Tell me, what was it that drove you to write your tell all memoir, _Sexting Myself?"_

"Oh, James," Charlie said, fighting back a smile. "I would have to say it was two things. The first, of course, being my lifelong battle with sexual frustration. The second being my unlikely friendship with Oprah. Her guidance really brought me to a place of honesty and masturbation."

Both Jo and Paige had laughed at that, but Eden just rolled her eyes. Tuck looked slightly uncomfortable, but took a large swig of his drink. Emily maintained her composure completely.

"Ah yes, that calls to mind the one woman show you filmed for HBO: _Every Day an Orgasm. _Tell me, are you ever satisfied?" Emily was rolling now.

"I am, but it usually takes 10 orgasms, James," Charlie looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself now.

"I'm sure, by now, we've all seen the iconic images of you and Oprah riding horseback on the beach, naked," Emily transitioned before Charlie could say anything too revealing.

"Those were breathtaking, weren't they?" Charlie threw in.

"I wept," Emily said simply, and Paige saw Charlie struggling to not laugh. "Some thought it was unwise when Oprah gave you your own reality show on OWN. What was that called again?" Emily asked, flipping through her note cards, though Paige was almost sure they were blank.

"Um…"Charlie seemed to not be as good as Emily was at thinking things up on the spot. "_Life-Size Cardboard Cut Out_."

Emily didn't miss a beat. "Six episodes. Six hours of undiluted genius. Some have heralded you as the most destructive force since the Plague swept Europe…" Emily began but that was it for Charlie. She burst out laughing and slumped over in her chair.

Paige was completely enamored with this Emily. She knew she was witnessing a side of the girl that only the people closest to her ever got to see. And Paige was so turned on by the sight of Emily in the suit, that she couldn't help but muse on how amazing Emily would be at role-playing.

It went on like this, Emily interviewed each of them as James Lipton until everyone was tipsy and giggling and breaking character more and more frequently as Emily came up with increasingly ridiculous fictional lives for them all. It wasn't just the things Emily was saying; it was how she said it all so very seriously and how she was dressed and the faces she was making as she spoke. She had the whole room eating out of the palm of her hand and everyone was in stitches. And the whole time, Emily's façade never broke.

At last, Emily called Paige up to the hot seat.

"Paige Darlene McCullers," she said, cocking her eyebrow as she stared Paige down. "Please, join me."

Paige almost laughed just from hearing the name Emily had made up for her, but she fought it back.

"Paige, you are legendary in Hollywood. Rumor after rumor has spread as to what your true origins are. Were you born from two human parents, or do you have, as legend has it, other-worldly origins?" Emily asked.

"The rumors are true, James," Paige said dramatically. "I was born to a man and woman, but not on this planet. We came here, as I'm sure you've guessed from my middle name, because my parents were such big fans of the show _Roseanne._"

"Fascinating," Emily said, straightening her glasses, "though, not surprising. I'm sure you've also heard the rumors that you are, in fact, the illegitimate love-child of Roseanne Barr and Steven Tyler?"

Paige let out a bark of laughter and then took a long drink of some Alabaster Albatross, which seemed to be Charlie's take on a White Russian, and which Paige was enjoying immensely.

"Oh my, James. No comment there," Paige replied.

"A mystery that, perhaps, will never be solved," Emily said solemnly, and went on. "You were, of course, classically trained on the stage before breaking into Hollywood. You stared as Elphaba in the revival of _Wicked _on Broadway. Tell me, what was that experience like?"

"It was, in a word, bizarre. No one before me had ever dared to stage a revival of a show when its original run hadn't even yet ended. It was a terrible idea," Paige said, and she thought she saw Emily's lip twitch slightly.

"You are a trailblazer in every sense of the word. Always thinking outside the box. After Broadway, you were cast in your first movie role. Tell us about that," Emily prompted.

"How could I ever forget the role that shaped who I have become today?" Paige said, stalling. She searched her mind for any theater or movie knowledge she possessed, looking for something she could use to make Emily laugh. Then she thought of something, something sort of stupid, but that she thought might work.

"That role was as Batman in Tim Burton's genre defying hybrid of the classic DC comic and Neil Simon's well known play, which of course, Burton aptly named _Bat-foot in the Park," _Paige really sold the delivery of the title, spreading her hands, fingers splayed dramatically, across the air in front of her face.

It worked. It was just a small snort of laughter, and Emily's lips pressed together more tightly than before, but everyone heard it and everyone was staring at Emily now, open-mouthed.

"Oh my god," Eden said in a hushed tone, "James Lipton broke!"

"Does that mean I win?" Paige asked.

"That depends," Emily said in her normal voice again. "What do you want for your prize?"

Paige couldn't help but look over at her suggestively. Emily, in that suit, was driving her crazy.

"Oh, that reminds me," Tuck said, watching the two of them, "you owe me 20 bucks, Charlie."

"WHAT?" Charlie shouted. "You guys made out?" She turned to Paige and Emily.

"You took bets on my love life?!" Emily shouted angrily, then her eyes shot open wide in horror as she realized she had just said the word "love." Her head dropped into her hands. She was sure Paige would freak out like she had that morning in the bathroom.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Eden was saying, oblivious to Emily's panic.

"We didn't plan on taking bets, Em," Jo said, apparently the one who had picked up on Emily's distress. "We were all rooting for you. I mean…"

Everyone seemed to be talking at once, in a confused jumble. Emily stood up, looked like she was going to say something, but then her eyes fell on Paige, and she just turned on her heel and stormed out of the room with a mortified look on her face.

"Why does it always end like this when we play Inside the Actors Studio?" Eden wondered aloud.


	21. Chapter 21:Morning Workout

Paige didn't know what she should do. She stood up and was struck by the fact that she hardly knew Emily at all. Did Emily like to be followed and consoled when she was upset or left alone to cool down? Paige turned helplessly to the group.

"Should I go after her?" she asked them all.

"You can try," Jo told her sympathetically, "but she usually locks her door."

Paige quickly moved through the house to the basement door. She tried the handle, jiggling it several times, but it was locked.

Eden was lecturing everyone in the other room. "What is wrong with all of you?!" Paige could hear her saying.

She knocked on the door. "Em? It's not a big deal, okay? I mean…I'm sorry if you didn't want anyone to know." For a moment, Paige wondered why Emily hadn't told her friends, but pushed the thought aside when she concluded it was probably due to her own actions that morning. "I didn't know Tuck was going to do that. Please, Emily, can we talk?"

Paige leaned her forehead against the door. She couldn't hear anything. No footsteps on the stairs. Emily wasn't going to open the door anytime soon.

Jo came into the kitchen about 15 minutes later and found Paige sitting on the floor, with her back resting against Emily's door.

"Come on," Jo said, offering Paige a hand up. "She's probably just embarrassed. We'll all apologize tomorrow and everything will be fine. "

Paige walked out of the kitchen with her and said good night to Tuck and the girls. Then she put on her pajamas, made up her bed on the couch, and climbed into it with her copy of _Leaves of Grass. _She wasn't tired. She was too worried about Emily.

Down on her bed in the basement, Emily was moping. She hadn't really cried, but a few angry tears had rolled down her cheeks once she had reached the solitude of her room. She'd spent the entire day worrying about Paige's obvious discomfort that morning, scared that Paige was pulling away again. And then Paige had come back to The Log acting like nothing was wrong and being her cute, alluring self while Emily was forced into acting like a total moron during that game. Then Paige had made her laugh and she'd broken character. Of course, Paige had made her laugh. Emily always felt like she was coming apart around the girl.

And now further humiliation.

Emily knew she was probably overreacting, but she couldn't bring herself to care or act more mature. She was tired of this endless wait, wondering when Paige would next land.

Emily pulled her copy of Emily Dickinson off the bookshelf, but not to read it. She just lay down in bed and held the volume against her chest. She needed a friend. It was only a few minutes, however, before Emily's phone started ringing.

She grabbed it off her nightstand and saw it was Paige calling her. A great and silent war raged between her head and her heart for a moment. Her heart was weary, though, and it gave up quickly. Her brain pressed decline on the call. But a few seconds later Paige called back again and this time Emily's heart won out.

"What?" Emily said, picking up the phone, not ready to let Paige off the hook just because she had called.

"Hello, Mr. Lipton," Paige said on the other end. "I was hoping I could speak to Emily?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny," Emily said in an un-amused tone. "What do you want Paige?"

"I want…to know you," Paige said.

It definitely wasn't what Emily was expecting to say. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I've been reading _Leaves of Grass,_ you know, by…"

"Walt Whitman," Emily interrupted. "I do know. Why?"

"My grandma gave me my grandpa's old copy of it. Um…I was kind of hoping you'd let me read one of the poems to you?" Paige sounded like she was asking Emily to the prom.

Emily was pretty sure she'd never wanted anything more than for Paige's sweet, raspy voice to read poetry to her. But she wasn't ready to show all her cards yet.

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Because…it made me think of you," Paige told her truthfully.

"Okay, go ahead," Emily said simply, though she was eager to know what poem it was.

"Alright," Paige said, trying to control her nerves, "it's called _To a Stranger. _Here we go…

'_Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon __  
__ you, __  
__You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to __  
__ me as of a dream,) __  
__I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,__  
__All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, __  
__ matured, __  
__You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,__  
__I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours __  
__ only nor left my body mine only, __  
__You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you __  
__ take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, __  
__I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone __  
__ or wake at night alone, __  
__I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,__  
__I am to see to it that I do not lose you.'"_

She finished and there was silence on Emily's end. She wondered if Paige could hear her heart beating.

"The thing is," Paige said after a moment, "I don't want to be strangers anymore. I want to know you. Please, Em. Can we try again tomorrow? I won't be such an idiot this time, I promise."

"That was really romantic," Emily said quietly, her walls beginning to crumble. "You're going to make an amazing girlfriend for somebody, someday."

"_You_ were amazing tonight," Paige told her. "The way you came up with all that stuff on the spot. And shit, you looked so sexy in that suit."

Emily felt Paige's words in her core, making her more than willing to forgive the girl as the image of Paige ripping the suit off of her entered her mind. She swallowed hard and exhaled loudly.

"I want to figure this out, Paige, whatever this is between us. I want to know you, too. Inside and out. Deeply." Emily wanted Paige to know how much she turned her on, and by the sound of the quiet "Fuck," that Paige uttered, Emily figured she caught her meaning.

"It might take us a while to get there, but I want that, too," Paige said breathily.

"Thank you for the poem, Paige," Emily said. "I'll have to return the favor sometime. I think I'll be able to fall asleep now."

"Good night, Emily," Paige responded, her own heart lighter than it had been all day. "It was my pleasure."

The next morning, Paige got up early and went for a run around campus. Taking a week off of training could really be detrimental to her times in the pool if she didn't at least do some cardio and get in the water for a few hours over the last four days of her visit. She ran hard for an hour and then headed back to The Log for a shower.

It didn't look like anyone was up yet when she got back, but it was only 7:30, so she wasn't surprised. Paige grabbed some clothes to change into and headed for the bathroom. Just as she reached for the doorknob, however, it opened and Emily ran right into her wearing nothing but a towel. Paige grabbed her around the waist so she wouldn't fall backwards.

"Shit. Hold on, Em. I've got you," Paige said, righting her again, but not removing her hands from the girl.

Emily was pressed up against Paige, her hands flat against her ribs and she had that same dark, hungry look in her eyes she'd had the night they had danced together. It took Paige a moment to realize why. While Paige's right hand had grabbed Emily _outside _of her towel, her left hand had inadvertently slipped through the gap in the towel and was now, Paige felt, wrapped firmly around Emily's bare, slightly damp waist. Paige felt arousal spark low in her belly and moved her thumb against Emily's stomach, unable to stop herself from seeing, both, how the girl's skin felt, and how Emily would react.

"Fuck, Paige," Emily growled, running her own hands down to Paige's stomach. "You're all sweaty…"

"I need to talk to you," Paige said and quickly moved them both back into the bathroom before leaning around Emily to shut the door with her hand that wasn't otherwise occupied.

"Do you really want to talk?" Emily asked her, continuing to drag her hands all over Paige's torso.

"No," Paige replied, pressing her firmly against the door.

"Thank God," Emily muttered throatily. She reached behind her, locked the door, and then moved her hands up around Paige's neck.

Neither of them had to start it, they were just kissing, their lips sliding fervently against each other and it felt like they had been for the entirety of history. Emily was so turned on, she could barely think. Every part of her being had become acutely aware of every touch and every thing happening on her skin.

Paige's hand was moving slowly up her ribcage until if she moved even another millimeter she would be holding Emily's breast in her hand. Paige's tongue ran across her lips and Emily eagerly opened her mouth, accepting any part of Paige into her that she could. She felt Paige slide a leg in between her own and push her further up against the door until nearly all of her weight was resting on the swimmer's toned thigh. The towel had ridden up, but it was still secured around her chest somehow. Paige moaned loudly into Emily's open mouth as her leg connected with Emily's center.

"Fuck, Em, I can feel you. You're so hot," she mumbled, and moved her mouth over to suck on Emily's earlobe and then further down to explore her straining neck.

Whatever sense Emily may have had left in her fell away as Paige rocked up against her. Her hands moved up and cupped Paige's breasts roughly. She could feel Paige's nipples, already hard underneath her shirt and she drug her thumbs over them. She wanted Paige to fuck her, right there, against the bathroom door. She didn't care who heard or that she'd really only known Paige for a few days. She wanted Paige to fuck her senseless.

"Yes…yes," was all Emily could manage between kisses as Paige claimed her mouth once again.

At this moment, though, Paige's hand that was under the towel began to travel south and as her pussy clenched almost painfully with want, Emily's mind re-awoke slightly. She hated herself for it, but she begrudgingly acknowledged that she wanted this thing with Paige to be a real thing and _maybe _fucking after they had only made out once wouldn't be such a good idea.

"Goddamit," Emily said out loud, as her fingers closed around Paige's wrist under the towel and stopped her before she'd reached her obvious target.

"What's wrong?" Paige asked, seeming to come out of a haze.

"God. Nothing. Really. But as much as I want you to fuck me against this door right now, I think we should probably get to know each other a little better." Emily was relieved to hear Paige let out a small laugh.

"Fuck. You're right. I'm sorry. I've just never been so attracted to anyone. It's a little…well, hard to navigate." Paige told her.

"You never have to apologize for doing that to me," Emily said, then licked her lips and made a small humming noise. "No, that was…that was good…I have a class at 8:30 though so unfortunately, I have to go get properly dressed."

"Okay, yeah, I should shower," Paige nodded, trying to calm herself down, though silently admitting that she would have to take care of herself in the shower to accomplish that. "I'm sorry if I got sweat on you or anything."

Emily took a moment to fully appreciate how good Paige looked in her skintight running gear. Then said, "I sincerely hope that you will be sweating on me more at some point in the future. Have a good shower," she said with a smirk and a knowing look as she left the bathroom.

Wearing a dopey grin and imagining what Paige would do to herself in the shower, Emily walked into the kitchen to head downstairs and get dressed. She wasn't paying attention to anything around her, so it startled her a little when Charlie, who was standing near the fridge and watching her, said, "Hey. Good morning?" with a shit eating grin plastered on her face. Clearly, Charlie had heard she and Paige in the bathroom.

"That depends," Emily told her coolly, "how much do you have riding on it?" She disappeared down the stairs, leaving Charlie to wonder what had just happened.


	22. Chapter 22: Old Wounds

Paige was on her own most of the morning since both Tuck and Emily had classes. After her shower, she made herself an omelet and then went into the living room to see if there was something on television she wanted to watch. It took Paige about 5 minutes before she finally figured out that they did not have cable at The Log. Instead, she looked through the movies that were stacked on the shelves that stood on either side of the TV.

Frankly, the enormous selection overwhelmed her. She was just about to give up and eat her omelet in silence when she noticed one DVD was lying on top of the Blu-ray player already. Paige picked it up and turned it over in her hands to read the synopsis. It was _The English Patient._ She thought it sounded interesting, so she popped the movie in and sat down on the couch to watch it.

Paige wasn't sure what to expect, but it she was thoroughly blown away by how much she liked the movie. She adored it. She even paused it to write down a quote on a notebook that someone had left out on the coffee table. Maybe all of the soul-searching Paige had been doing lately had left her emotionally raw and vulnerable. Maybe it was that she was developing real, deep feelings slowly but surely for Emily and the movie was about a doomed love affair.

Whatever the reason, about three hours later, when Tuck and Emily, who had met up on the way to The Log, walked in, they found Paige sitting silently on the couch. She had tears streaming down her face and she was clutching a piece of folded up notebook paper and staring despondently at the DVD screen, which was playing on a loop.

Emily felt extremely worried as she and Tuck entered the living room. Her mind immediately flashed to the heated scene in the bathroom that morning and she wondered if this was some kind of delayed reaction. But Tuck just looked between his sister and the TV screen and said, "Jesus, Paige. You really are getting in touch with your emotions, huh?"

"It was _so good," _Paige said, turning her bleary eyes to look at them.

Emily was relieved that this mood wasn't her doing, but she still wasn't sure what to do about this side of Paige she was witnessing for the first time. She put her backpack down and sat next to Paige, rubbing her soothingly on the back.

"This is real growth," Tuck said to Paige encouragingly. "I don't think you've cried at a movie since we saw _Homeward Bound_."

Paige laughed a little at this. "I think you're right," she responded. "Shit, now I'm thinking about _Homeward Bound…_"

"Oh god. I'm sorry," Tuck said jumping up to grab a box of tissues from the bathroom as the tears started flowing down Paige's face again.

"This is ridiculous," she sniffled pitifully.

"Why don't we go grab some lunch somewhere and you can stop thinking about sad movies?" Emily suggested.

"Good idea," Tuck agreed, grabbing Paige's leather jacket from the coat rack and handing it to Paige. "Come on, champ, let's fatten you up."

"I hate it when you call me 'champ,'" Paige said, but she put her jacket on, and stuffed the piece of paper with the movie quote in its pocket as the three left the house.

Paige's roller coaster of a morning was soon forgotten. They went to a diner just a few blocks from campus because Emily insisted that what Paige needed was a large plate of poutine. Tuck hadn't tried it either and it was Emily's favorite dish there, so they all ended up ordering the same thing.

It was one of the most entertaining things Emily had ever seen, watching the twins sitting side by side in the red upholstered booth, elbowing one another to try to get more room and devouring their food, both of them muttering things the entire time—

"Oh. My. God."

"Is it just fries and gravy? What is _that? _Cheese?"

"This is sooooo good."

"Tuck, move your giant arm!"

"Just scoot over!"

Emily was laughing so hard her stomach hurt.

"I never really saw it until just now," she told them both.

"What?" Tuck asked running a finger along his empty plate and licking up the left over gravy. Paige was doing the exact same thing.

"The twin thing," Emily elaborated. "But you both eat the same way."

The twins glanced sideways at each other in tandem and then both pushed their plates away. This only made Emily laugh harder.

"You two must have been a handful at meal times," she mused.

"We did get separated a lot," Tuck admitted. "We weren't allowed to sit next to each other."

"That was your fault," Paige said defensively. "You were kicking me."

"You're the one who smeared mashed potatoes in my hair," Tuck glowered back. "That was totally uncalled for."

Emily loved getting a glimpse into what Paige had been like as a kid. Her curiosity was piqued from this exchange, so she asked, "What was the worst fight you guys ever had?"

"Well…"Tuck said, a small crease forming in his brow. "That depends on how you define 'worst.'"

"Oh, please," Paige said, pointing dramatically at the small scar by her by her right eyebrow. Emily had noticed it, and found it rather sexy, but had not yet had a chance to ask Paige how she got it.

"So, we're not counting the Coaster Incident then?" Tuck sassed his sister a bit.

"No," Paige said simply, not taking the bait. "I think Em is looking for a story you haven't already told her."

"By all means then," Tuck said gesturing with his hand in a sweeping motion for Paige to take it away.

"We were twelve," Paige began dramatically. "It was spring. Our parents were both at a church meeting for the evening. Tuck, as he often did, had greedily claimed the TV for the night. This time, if I recall correctly, it was…"

"Please don't," Tuck interjected, trying to stop Paige from revealing whatever she was about to divulge.

"A Jonas Brothers concert," Paige said with a snarl.

Tuck hung his head in embarrassment. "I was so gay, even then," he said with a sigh.

Emily was laughing, enjoying the story already. "Go on," she encouraged, thinking she would be happy to listen to Paige tell her stories for years.

"Well, I was sick of it. I just wanted to watch _anything _else. I mean, I already had to listen to the Jonas Brothers 24/7 because Tuck wouldn't stop playing their CD. I didn't want to stare at them for a whole two hours."

"Hey, you liked Nick!" Tuck shouted defensively.

Paige held her hands up in surrender. "I may have thought his curly hair was cute," she admitted. "Anyway…I tried to steal the remote away. We wrestled over it, but Tuck wouldn't give it up. We were pretty evenly matched back then. OBVIOUSLY, I would win now." Paige flexed her arms at this point for effect and Tuck rolled his eyes and made gagging noises.

"So, I don't remember exactly how it came up," Paige continued, ignoring Tuck's antics, "but basically Tuck told me we could watch whatever I wanted if I did whatever he dared me to do. And, hello, it's me. I would never back down from a dare! So I agreed."

"Now, please keep in mind, we were twelve," Tuck said, "and my dare was very shocking and risqué at the time I extended it."

"Dude, it was kinda lame even then," Paige said in an aside to her brother. "I had recently begun wearing what my mother referred to as 'training bras.' It was really saucy, I know," Paige added noticing Emily's raised eyebrows and smirk. "And it was a _pretty big deal_," Paige finished sarcastically gesturing towards her breasts.

"What was the dare?" Emily asked impatiently. She was enjoying the story too much to be deterred, even by Paige's breasts.

"Tuck dared me," Paige said dramatically, leaning forward over the tabletop, "to run around the outside of our house once wearing only my bra on the top half."

Emily burst out laughing. "Oh man, good one, Tuck," she said looking over to him as he took a small bow in his seat.

"I was pretty cocky, even back then," Paige continued, "so I stripped my shirt off and, wearing nothing but my super revealing sports bra, went outside to begin my lap around the house. Tuck accompanied me to the back stoop to ensure I completed the dare with no cheating. Our house was on some land that had a slope on one side of it. I started running around the side of the house that was level, then into the front yard, and down the front steps that led to the driveway and garage. Everything was going great until I hit the stairs. I'd run down those steps a hundred times so I wasn't worried. But I tripped on the _very last _step, flew up into the air and came down, head first, well, face first, onto the cement of the driveway."

Emily gasped and threw her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god, Paige. Were you okay?"

Paige couldn't help but fall a little for Emily in that moment, as she watched the girl worry over something that had happened so long and which, obviously, as she was currently sitting in the diner, she had recovered from easily.

"I remember thinking, in midair, as everything went into slow motion, 'oh, fuck,'" Paige said. "When my head smacked the pavement, I saw this flash of light and I just had to lie there for a minute before I could get up. My head was _killing_ me. I started screaming for Tuck it hurt so bad."

"I thought she was fucking with me. Just trying to scare me. And I didn't have any shoes on, so I stayed on the back porch," Tuck told Emily guiltily. "I still feel bad about that."

"So, with no help from this one," Paige said, thumbing over at Tuck, "I eventually got to my feet and sort of stumbled across the driveway and up the path in the back. I was really out of it, but when Tuck finally saw me he went pale as a ghost and ran down to help me, so I knew it must be bad."

"She asked me if she was bleeding," Tuck explained, "but I didn't want to scare her, so I said no, even though she had blood all over the side of her face."

"But I knew he was lying. He's a horrible liar. I put my hand up to my face, right here," Paige said pointing to her scar again, "because that's where it hurt the most and when I pulled my hand away again it was covered in blood."

"She actually yelled, 'What the hell is this then?'" Tuck said shaking his head at the memory. "What a precocious child."

"We got inside and we were so freaked out. We didn't want to call 911 but our parents hadn't jumped on the cell phone bandwagon, yet," Paige laughed.

"I believe this incident is what drove them to buy cell phones, actually," Tuck added.

"So Tuck called 911 and an ambulance showed up. I think they were surprised I was conscious, cuz when they got there, the paramedics were all, 'Is this her?' and then made us go back into the house to leave our parents a note about where we were going," Paige told Emily, who had grabbed her hand somewhere around the part of the story where Paige discovered the blood. Paige held it happily.

"My favorite part of this story," Tuck said, grinning, "was when the police showed up at our Dad's church to find my parents and the other people at the meeting thought he was being arrested. It was such a scandal when he and my mom were escorted out midway through the meeting!"

"Back to your poor, injured sister, though," Paige interjected, wanting to milk Emily's sympathy, "who had to get five stitches. I cracked my head open just to get you to turn off the Jonas Brothers!"

"It wasn't that bad," Tuck said dismissively. "You can barely see the scar anymore."

"Are you kidding me?" Paige asked staring wide-eyed at Tuck. "You're going to down play this?"

Tuck looked defensive, so Emily decided to step in.

"I actually have a thing for badass scars, so it worked out in your favor," she said squeezing Paige's hand slightly and cocking one eyebrow suggestively.

"See? I was just trying to help you win over this beautiful lady," Tuck said seizing the excuse.

"Right," Paige responded as they all got up to pay their bills at the front counter. "Nine years ago, you foresaw this exact situation playing out."

"What can I say?" Tuck said with a lofty air. "When I'm good, I'm _good._"

* * *

**Author's Note: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who is reading, following, and favoriting this story! There is still a lot to be told, so stick with me. And I love hearing from all of you, so please, review or send me a message! Thanks again. **


	23. Chapter 23: Killing Contract

On the walk back to The Log, Paige finally remembered to ask Emily about the pool situation. It turned out Vallance did have a pool, and even a water polo team.

"Do you have to be super serious about it, or could we all go?" Emily asked.

"Well, I will be doing laps for awhile, but there's no reason you and the girls can't come and swim, too," Paige told her. "It'd be nice to have someone to time me, actually."

"I'll ask my supervisor at work tomorrow," Emily said, grinning widely, "but I'm thinking a late night pool party will be going down tomorrow."

"Can I come, too? Or is it girls only?" Tuck asked, feeling a little left out.

"Of course, Tuck!" Emily told him. "You know you're one of the girls!"

Tuck smiled proudly at this. "Damn right!" he said.

Tuck and Emily both had to head out again for afternoon classes, but Jo and Charlie were at home when they returned. Paige spent the afternoon playing darts with the two of them (Jo won) and then helping make dinner.

The longer Paige spent around these girls, the more she wished she could stay there with them forever. She found herself wondering how she could have misjudged her own desires and needs so drastically. It seemed so obvious to Paige now that she would have flourished more at a smaller college. She loved swimming, and being on the team at Stanford was something she never took for granted, but it was starting to feel like the only thing worth going back to in California.

When Eden, Tuck, and Emily got home around 5 pm, the other three had the table laden with a delicious but less than cohesive assortment of dishes. Each dish looked mouthwateringly delicious, but as each girl had decided to make their dishes separately, they didn't really make sense together. Charlie had made an enormous pot of Matzo ball soup. Jo had made salmon patties and baked some brussel sprouts in the oven. Paige had decided to treat them all to her grandma's red velvet cake.

They stayed at the table for hours, eating slowly, groaning over how good the food was, drinking wine and talking about everything that popped into their heads. Paige and Emily were sitting together on one side of the table and Paige felt so content to just be there, feeling warm from light from the wine, as the time went by, just holding Emily's hand, just being near her.

Paige imagined herself floating above the room, looking down on the scene. The sun had set and Eden had switched on two standing lamps that cast a soft yet sufficient glow around the room. Now that everyone had finished eating, Jo had leaned back and put her stocking feet up on the table, ignoring everyone's protests about the smell. Charlie was half-heartedly suggesting that they play spin the bottle with one of the empty wine bottles. Eden had brought up a play that was coming to Chicago in the winter that she wanted to see and they were discussing splitting the bill for a hotel room one weekend and going to see it if Tuck could borrow his friend's car again. It was careless, this living, nearly inconsequential, but Paige had rarely felt so safe or so happy. It was a wholly new experience for her. She looked at he mural across from her, read the words again, and thought that for the first time she was truly stepping out of her body. Paige was finally blossoming.

As the hum of conversation continued around her, Paige thought of the tiger lilies that grew along the side of her family's house in Philadelphia. How they poured copiously, wantonly off the bushes in the summer. How she and Tuck as kids in July had sometimes stuck firecrackers in their delicate heads and lit the wicks. This sort of joy felt like that had; running barefoot in and out of exploding flower beds.

Emily and Paige had volunteered to wash the dishes so they could get some time alone. When they'd all finally peeled themselves away from the table, the others had happily moved off to the living room to put in a movie.

Now the two were standing at the sink, Paige, elbow deep in soapy water, and Emily, drying dishes as fast as she could with a towel that didn't seem to have any dry spots left on it.

"What you said earlier today in the diner," Paige said after they'd been silently working for a few minutes, "about having a thing for scars. Was that true, or were you just being nice?"

"I was serious," Emily told her. "I'm kind of big on honesty, actually. I rarely say things just to be nice. I can be kind of mean because of it without, well, meaning to be."

"Really?" Paige asked, surprised by this new information about the girl next to her.

"Yeah, it was kind of a problem when I was a kid," Emily explained. "I had no filter whatsoever. My mom had to instigate this rule that I could only speak my mind about other people when we were alone in the car." Emily grimaced a little and glanced over at Paige.

"Yeesh," Paige said chuckling. "I have to remember not to piss you off."

"I think it's one of the reasons I started writing, actually," Emily said. "I had a lot of emotions and opinions that I needed to get out but couldn't talk about."

Paige could sense that Emily was in rare mood. She seemed to be relaxed from the long dinner and now focused on drying the dishes just enough that she was letting her wall down and saying whatever came into her head; a quality Paige now new had been something she had been struggling to shut down her whole life. Trusting her instincts, Paige decided to just listen for a while and see what she could learn about Emily.

"Back to your original question, though," Emily went on, "I think scars are beautiful. I wrote a 20 page essay about it for my nonfiction class first year." She laughed, a little nervously, but kept talking. "Every scar is a story. It's like a history recorded on our bodies. People who don't have any scars, well, at least in my experience, are pretty boring. I've always been attracted to tomboys. The girls who played football during recess, who weren't afraid to climb a tree."

Paige grinned. She was _definitely_ that kind of girl. "So what's this scar on your arm from?" Paige had noticed this scar on the back of Emily's left bicep as Emily wiped one of the plates.

"Oh gosh, I almost forgot about that since I can't usually see it," Emily said, raising her arm to look at the thin scar. "I got that my first year here at this frat party. There was this guy there, I didn't know who he was. The girls and I weren't close yet. It was only October. But Jo and I had met in class and we went to this party together. We saw Charlie and Eden there. They were roommates first year, actually. You know, just paired up randomly by the school in freshman housing. We all sort of knew each other from the scene shop, so we were all dancing together and this sleazy guy came up behind me and started dancing up on me. I tried to move away from him, but he just followed me, so I elbowed him in the stomach to help him get the picture. He just got really pissed when I did that and grabbed me by my arms. He scratched me pretty deeply on my arm there with one of his nails, or he was holding something, maybe. It was so dark, I couldn't really tell. Well, the second he grabbed me Charlie was all over that. She got right up in his face and pushed him off me. And when he pushed Charlie back, Eden threw her drink in his face. And when he went to grab Eden, Jo punched him right in the nose. He looked a little too stunned to do anything else and we left after that. But it was sort of the bonding moment between us all. That was when we started to become really close. "

While Paige's stomach had churned uneasily at the picture of an asshole harassing Emily, by the end of the story her heart was swelling with admiration for the three women Emily called her best friends. She'd been so wrapped up in the story that she was just holding a dirty pot, the sponge lying dejectedly in the sink.

"I'm pretty sure those girls would die for you," Paige said, her eyes betraying how badly she wished for that kind of friendship in her own life.

Emily wasn't looking, though. She was busy drying a handful of forks.

"Charlie and Jo would probably die for me. Eden would kill for me. Or kill me…we actually have this pact." Emily said nonchalantly.

"Wait, wait, wait," Paige rattled off in disbelief, putting the pot down and turning to face Emily fully. "Go back a sec. You have a _death pact_ with Eden?"

"Yeah, we made it the summer before last," Emily said, dropping the clean silverware into the drawer next to her. "If either of us get Alzheimer's or dementia, or loses our memories somehow, the other one is going to kill them."

Paige had forgotten the dishes completely now. She was staring at Emily with a horrified look on her face. Emily finally looked up at her and realized she needed to explain further.

"I mean, it's kind of a joke," she said quickly, "but losing my memory is my biggest fear."

"You'd rather die," Paige asked, "than forget something? That's totally irrational."

"Oh, I know I'll _forget_ things," Emily clarified. "I'll grow old and maybe even one day forget the name of my wife when she's sitting right next to me. But if I can look at her and know her in my heart and I can still feel all the years running underneath that moment, that I could live with." Emily had forgotten the dishes, too. She had moved forward and was fiddling absent-mindedly with the hem on the bottom of Paige's shirt while she spoke. "But if I lose every beautiful moment…watching the sun rise from the roof of the garage after a sleepover when I was 10…the afternoon I read Harry Potter for the first time and felt so excited about what would happen next…the way the tree looked all lit up in the dark living room when I would sneak out of my room on Christmas Eve as a kid…the night I met you. That's the kind of void that scares me. I _would _rather be dead than surrounded by people I know and love but can't even recognize. What kind of life would that be?" Emily was giving Paige such a burning look that it felt like Emily was reaching inside of her as she spoke.

"Sometimes I'm scared of remembering," Paige admitted under the scorch of those eyes. "Of all the dumb shit I've done. The mistakes I've made."

"But you're still so young, Paige," Emily told her imploringly, moving her hands into the front pockets of Paige's jeans. "You still have so much time to make amazing, beautiful memories."

Paige grinned as Emily's eyes softened. "I could say the same to you."

"Touché," Emily said and leaned into Paige, kissing her eagerly for a good minute before pulling back again. "Maybe we should set a minimum age."

"Like," Paige suggested, pulling Emily over to the counter by the fridge, "if you lose your memories after you're 70, then Eden can kill you."

"That sounds reasonable," Emily told her, running her hands over Paige's flat stomach.

"Actually, nothing about this seems reasonable," Paige laughed, brushing the hair away from Emily's face like she'd been doing it for years.

"I'll have to add an amendment to the contract," Emily said, ignoring Paige's last comment.

"Wait," Paige stilled in her movements. "You actually have this all down on paper?"

"Eden's pretty hardcore," Emily nodded. "She even made Charlie and Jo sign it as witnesses. She wants to avoid legal repercussions should she have to kill me."

"You are a strange duck, Emily Fields," Paige told her, chuckling, and then buried her hands in Emily's black hair at the back of her head as they began to kiss in earnest.


	24. Chapter 24: Loose Lips

Emily had asked Paige and Tuck to keep mum about the possible pool party they would be having later that night until she cleared it with her supervisor. She had an opening shift at the fitness center, which meant she had to have the doors unlocked by 6 am. So Emily was up at 5:15 so she could take a quick shower and have some breakfast.

Before she left the house, she couldn't help but sneak a peek at Paige who was still fast asleep on the couch. She'd fallen asleep reading. _Leaves of Grass _was lying open on her chest and the lamp was still on. Emily gently pulled the book out of her hands and put it on the table. Paige stirred slightly, her eyes fluttering open for a moment when Emily clicked off the lamp. Just as Emily was leaving the room she heard Paige mutter sleepily, "You're so beautiful."

She moved back to the couch for a moment, kissed Paige lightly on the lips, and said, "Go back to sleep, baby."

The term of endearment had slipped out of her mouth without Emily even thinking about it. She stilled for a moment, unsure of what Paige would think, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, but Paige's eyes had closed again and she was drifting back to sleep. She probably wouldn't even remember it when she woke up. At least Emily hoped she wouldn't as she hurried to the door and left for work.

As relieved as Emily was that Paige had not seemed to notice what she had called her, she had freaked herself out quite a bit. Emily had not even wanted to call anyone "baby" since she and her high school girlfriend, Maya, had broken up before Emily had left for college. Emily couldn't help but feel like she was getting too attached to Paige. The fact remained that she lived 2000 miles away and was barely out of the closet. Emily couldn't help how she felt when she was around Paige and she wished that things were different but at present she just couldn't fathom how a relationship would ever work between them. As Emily reached the fitness center and began to unlock the doors, her mind settled on the Dickinson poem yet again. She wished she could peel back the curtain and get just a little glimpse into the future, just to see if Paige would ever land in her life completely.

There was a slow stream of people that came in to work out while Emily sat dutifully at the front desk. Around 9 am, her supervisor, a woman in her mid-40s named Karen, showed up and Emily explained to her about Paige, how she was visiting her brother and was on the swim team at Stanford. Karen had no problem giving a spare set of keys to Emily for the natatorium for the evening since Emily had been a responsible employee for over a year now and she trusted the girl. But she told her she expected them to leave it as they found it and Emily needed to return the keys to her tomorrow even though she wasn't working. Emily thanked her profusely.

When Emily finished her shift at 10, she gathered her things and left for the building her Intro to Film class was held in. The class started at 10:20 and Emily arrived about ten minutes early so she sat in the back, putting her bag in the seat next to her to save it for Tuck. About five minutes later, though, Emily got a huge shock when she looked up and saw not only Tuck but also Paige, walking into the classroom.

"You didn't save a seat for me, too?" Paige asked sauntering over and sliding into the open seat in front of Emily while Tuck took the one she'd been saving next to her.

"What are you doing here?" Emily asked.

"I emailed Professor Anderson to ask if she could join us today. Paige thought the class sounded interesting," Tuck explained.

Emily couldn't explain it, but she felt _so nervous_ having Paige there. They'd been heatedly making out against the kitchen cabinets only 12 hours ago. Emily felt so silly, but couldn't stop her stomach from doing flip-flops. Paige was always popping up in her life when she least expected it.

Tuck pulled an extra notebook out of his bag and handed it, along with a pen to Paige, saying, "Here, try to look studious."

At that point, their professor, a thin, blonde, domineering woman, who also taught Victorian and Gothic Literature, walked in and everyone fell silent as her voice rang out.

"Okay," she began, "today we're going to be talking through some different camera shots and how they're used to communicate emotions to the audience. In particular, we'll be looking at the Trombone Shot, which Hitchcock first used in Vertigo."

Emily Anderson was the professor's name, and she gave a curt nod to Paige as a way of saying "I see you and it's fine you're here." Then Professor Anderson turned around to log in to the computer on the desk. She usually showed them movie clips on Youtube of the things they talked about in class. As she was logging in, Paige's hand, clutching a folded piece of paper shot behind her towards Emily. Emily quickly grabbed the paper Paige was passing to her and held it nervously for a moment before opening it quietly. Professor Anderson had found the first video and it was just starting to play as Emily looked down at what Paige had written.

_Thanks for the kiss this morning, baby_

Emily was mortified.

"Oh, god," she mumbled as she slowly curled over on herself and laid her forehead flat on her desk. The note was still clutched in her sweaty hands. Paige _had_ heard her. Emily felt like she was going to collapse into a pile of embarrassment.

"Miss Fields," Professor Anderson's voice boomed out suddenly, "Are you ill?"

"No," Emily replied meekly as she sat up straight again, knowing better than to bullshit this particular teacher.

"Then I suggest you pay attention," Professor Anderson told her with a stern look.

"Sorry," Emily replied and stuffed the note into her jacket pocket.

The rest of the class dragged by painfully until it ended at 11:50. Emily had spent most of it staring anxiously at the back of Paige's head, dreading the moment when Professor Anderson would release the class and she'd have to face the girl. Emily wasn't sure what to expect when Paige turned around, but what she saw was an amused expression. She had a mischievous smirk on and looked rather proud of herself.

"So are you in?" Tuck asked on Emily's left, pulling her attention away from Paige.

"What?" Emily said, wondering if she missed something he had already said.

"That note," Tuck said, narrowing his eyes at Emily. "It was inviting you to come with us to the caf for lunch, right?"

"Oh…yes!" Emily replied a little too enthusiastically. They filed out of the room and down the stairs together. Once out of the building, Tuck and Paige began chatting about something, but Emily wasn't listening to them. She was silently contemplating the possibility of spontaneous combustion.

Once in the cafeteria, they found an empty table and put their bags on it, then headed up to see what was available for lunch. Emily didn't fancy any of the already made hot items, so she started making a sandwich at the sandwich bar. Just as she was layering some roast beef on top of a piece of provolone cheese, she felt Paige step up behind her. Emily could only see about half of Paige because of how close she was standing to her. Paige had a bowl of beef stew in one hand. Emily had stopped breathing and was just staring at the bowl Paige was holding.

"Calm down, Em. I liked it," she whispered in the sexiest purr Emily had ever heard. Emily felt wetness pooling between her legs instantaneously, but before she could respond, Paige had walked away again.

As Emily approached their table, Paige shot her a sexy smile and looked Emily up and down. This did nothing but increase her arousal and Emily acknowledged silently to herself that it was probably a good thing that Paige didn't go to Vallance. If she did they would literally be doing nothing but fucking.

"So, did you talk to your supervisor this morning?" Paige asked innocently, as if she didn't know she was orchestrating the sexual undoing of Emily Fields.

"Yes," Emily replied evenly, momentarily finding the strength to reroute the waver she knew would have been in her voice, into her now slightly shaking hands.

"Did you have too much coffee this morning or something?" Tuck inquired, eyeing her trembling hands suspiciously.

Emily let out a sort of strangled laugh and bit into her sandwich. Paige had slipped one of her shoes off and was now running her foot up and down Emily's calf. Emily let out a moan she tried to pass off as appreciation for her sandwich.

"God, I make a good sandwich," she said quickly. "Mmmmm."

"And?" Tuck asked, trying to get her to divulge if they were allowed in the pool or not.

"And…I forgot to get a drink!" Emily said, not catching Tuck's drift, jumping up and trotting off to the soda machine.

Tuck wasted no time. As soon as Emily had left the table, he rounded on Paige.

"Did you fuck her?" he demanded.

"Theodore!" Paige said, mildly surprised that he had come right out with it.

"Whatever you're doing, stop it," he told Paige sternly, whose mouth had turned into a slight frown.

"I was having fun," she pouted.

"And put your shoe back on," he added with an exasperated sigh.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Paige mumbled, wiggling her foot back into its shoe.

When Emily got back to the table, Paige did her best to keep her libido in check, but it wasn't easy. No one, other than her mother, had ever called her "baby." Hearing Emily call her that this morning had flipped on some kind of switch inside her. Paige felt like she was soaring, like she was on top of the world. It was the same euphoria she felt after winning a race in the pool. And it also had the same side effect: extreme cockiness. That, coupled with the fact that Emily was smoking hot, had snowballed into extreme horniness. All Paige could think about was getting the other girl alone so she could do things to her that would make her call her baby again and hopefully a few other names as well…

Emily had no idea what had gotten into Paige, but she wasn't complaining. After she came back from grabbing a soda, Paige didn't physically touch her again for the rest of their lunch, but she was practically undressing Emily with her eyes the whole time. Paige had on her Vallance sweatshirt again ("I wanted to blend in with the other students during class," she explained) and it only added to this sexual game Paige seemed to be playing with her. Probably because it was the first thing that Emily had ever seen Paige wearing, the sweatshirt was always what Emily pictured Paige dressed in in her fantasies before they ripped each other's clothes off.

It was finally communicated that Family Swim Night was a go. Tuck was getting tired of the two girls eye fucking, so he excused himself to head to his next class as soon as he finished eating.

"You two either need to go somewhere and fuck or get yourselves off separately because this shit is getting ridiculous," Tuck stated dramatically as he picked up his empty plate and left them there.

"Well, that was rude," Paige muttered, blushing.

The two finished eating in silence, both of them feeling fairly embarrassed by Tuck calling them out.

"Are you…I mean, do you have another class to go to now?" Paige finally said as they stood up to return their dishes to the kitchen.

"No," Emily told her. "I just have Film on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's pretty nice, I have the afternoons completely free."

"Yeah, that does sound nice," Paige told her grinning, happy to hear she and Emily had some time to kill together.

Outside the cafeteria, Emily turned to Paige as they walked slowly, unsure of how to proceed. She still felt a little self conscious about calling Paige "baby," especially after Tuck's comments, and she was hoping Paige would take the lead in this particular situation.

"Do you want to do something?" Emily asked, one of her hands rubbing her neck anxiously. "Go for a walk or something? Is there anything in town you wanted to see but haven't yet?"

"Yeah, there is," Paige told her, boldness coursing through her veins once more. "I was really hoping I could see your room."

Emily giggled, her hands dropping to her sides in relief. She couldn't ask for much more direction than that.

"Hmm," she said playfully. "I could probably arrange a private viewing for you."

They walked down the empty hallway that led to the doors slowly, glancing at each other every few steps.

When they were a few feet away from the door, Paige stopped.

"Emily," Paige said, stopping as they drew near the doors to leave the student union, her voice sounding earnest now, "you know I didn't just come to see Tuck this time."

"You didn't?" Emily asked, her heart beating fast.

"No. Since the first time we met, I haven't stopped thinking about you. I wanted to see you again," Paige told her.

"What is this, Paige? You and me…" Emily said, finally expressing what she'd been occupied with since they'd kissed the first time.

"Honestly, I'm not really sure. If we lived a little closer…" Paige trailed off.

Emily's heart ached in her chest at these words, wishing for something that was almost in reach.

"Paige, I've never felt…" Emily had to fight her urge to just stop talking, to ignore the voice in her head telling her that she was going to scare Paige away if she was too honest or too forward. "I've never felt so strongly about another person, especially not this quickly."

Paige held Emily's gaze as she pushed this admission out, knowing it couldn't be easy for her to say.

"I have a huge crush on you, Emily," Paige gushed, wanting to give the girl her truth, all that she knew for certain herself. "It's pretty serious. Can we just start there and see?"

"I feel like I'm walking around in a dark house," Emily mused. "But I don't need the lights because I already know where everything is."

"You're so damn poetic, sometimes," Paige grinned.

"Sorry," Emily told her sheepishly. "It's just how I process things."

"Don't apologize," Paige said. "I think it's beautiful. And that time I actually got what you were saying. It feels like we've known each other for a long time."

"I wish you lived here," Emily said after a moment.

Paige wished that, too, but she couldn't say it. Not when she had to be the one to leave and go back to a place where she felt so lonely.

"Come on," she said, slipping her fingers in between Emily's and clasping her hand tightly, fighting the sadness down in her chest. "Let's go pretend for an afternoon."

They walked out together. It was the 14th of October. The afternoon sun was dripping through the changing leaves of the old trees that towered around campus like amber. And they might as well have been ants the world seemed so large.


	25. Chapter 25: Night Swimming

Emily and Paige spent the entire afternoon on Emily's bed in the basement. Paige shed her Vallance sweatshirt and they lay tangled together on top of the blanket, kissing whenever they felt like it (which was quite frequently), running their fingers through each other's hair, and memorizing the other's body as best they could.

They talked about everything—their first memories, their pet peeves, the music they loved, and their guilty pleasures. And they played songs for each other off of their phones and on Emily's laptop.

They were always touching— Emily's legs wrapped around Paige's middle while she looked up a video to show her on Youtube. Paige tracing her fingers along each bone of Emily's spine and then grabbing her ass firmly as Emily lay on top of her while they made out. Emily found a sensitive spot on Paige's back that made her arch and groan each time her fingers brushed over it. And Paige discovered that Emily was the most ticklish on her neck and it made her squirm and laugh when Paige even made a tickling motion anywhere near it.

Paige tucked every moment they spent away into herself like she was storing up for a hurricane or a blizzard. She didn't know when, after this visit, she would get to see Emily again. Emily, for her part, insisted that they take some pictures with her phone as they goofed off, kissing and pulling faces for the camera.

In short, they spent the afternoon beginning to fall in love.

When evening finally rolled around, they begrudgingly pried themselves out of the little land of Emily's bed and went back up the stairs to see what was happening for dinner.

"I think you've dehydrated me," Paige told Emily as the opened the door to the kitchen. "Is it possible to become dehydrated from kissing someone so much?"

"Well, I feel fantastic," Emily told her seriously, "so maybe I sucked you dry."

"You greedy, greedy woman," Paige said, grabbing Emily around the waist and pulling her in for a kiss. She was already missing Emily's physical presence against her from the hours in the basement.

"You need to rehydrate before we hit the pool later," Emily said smiling, happy to be in Paige's arms whenever she got the chance.

"Did you say pool?" Jo asked as she and Charlie walked in to the kitchen.

Emily and Paige had decided over the course of the afternoon that they would pretend that Emily had stolen the keys to the natatorium and they were going to break in to use the pool. It was Paige's idea, because, according to her, Emily needed some more street cred. Emily turned in Paige's arms to face her friends.

"I hope you two don't have plans tonight," she said deviously. "I stole the keys to the pool from my supervisor. We're breaking in. Tonight. At midnight. Dress in black."

"Are you serious?" Jo said looking worried.

"Holy shit!" Charlie declared. "You better be serious! That sounds _amazing_. We do the best stuff when Paige visits."

"I am completely serious," Emily said, staring them down. "Where's Eden? I need to let her know as well."

"I'll text her," Charlie said, waving Emily off. "She's busy pretending to be stuck in a box right now. It's a hard life being a mime."

About 20 minutes into dinner, Charlie's phone buzzed with an incoming message. It was a video of Eden miming a front crawl and jumping off a diving board.

"Guess that means Operation Aquatic is a go," Emily said happily when Charlie played the video for them all.

"Edie's really improved in the last two weeks," Charlie said about the video. "Last week she sent me a video asking me to make her a sandwich, you know, through mime, and I thought she was asking if I wanted to play strip poker."

"Why would she mime ask you to play strip poker with her?" Jo asked, shaking her head at Charlie's presumption.

"Why _wouldn't _she, is the real question," Charlie said with a cocky grin. "Anyway, she was really pissed when I showed up with a deck of cards and an extra pair of socks instead of a sandwich."

"Wait, why did you have an extra pair of socks?" Emily asked.

"I'm very self conscious about my ankles," Charlie explained, crossing her arms across her chest protectively.

"Where did you guys even find her?" Paige said, laughing loudly and gesturing toward Charlie.

When 11:30 finally rolled around, the girls and Tuck, who had come over around 8 pm, all met by the front door with their suits and towels. Jo, Tuck, Emily, and Paige had on normal clothes. Eden and Charlie, however, were dressed head to foot in black and Charlie was even clutching a ski mask. Emily burst out laughing when she saw them come down the stairs to join the others.

"Laugh now, Fields," Charlie told her, "but when we're being chased by security guards, we'll disappear so fast you'll think we were ghosts."

"That's right," Eden said, flicking up the hood of her sweatshirt behind Charlie and peering around her shoulder. "We're made of darkness."

Paige was looking at Emily with the most amused look on her face. She didn't have to say anything for Emily to know what she was thinking; Paige's idea to let the girls believe they were breaking into the pool had definitely paid off. Emily felt justified in getting some pay back for the bets they had placed on she and Paige over the weekend.

"Come on, we need to get to the pool before Paige forgets how to swim," Tuck said, ushering them all out the door.

Jo and Tuck fell into the lead with Paige and Emily quietly holding hands behind them and Charlie and Eden bringing up the rear.

"I think you should stick around just so we can prank the girls together," Emily told Paige as they walked. Paige smiled sadly, her face falling. She hoped that Emily wouldn't be able to tell in the dim, yellow glow the moon was casting through some thin clouds above them.

"I am a lot of fun on April Fool's Day," Paige chuckled, trying to be cheerful. "I convinced my 3rd grade teacher that I had injured my hand in a bizarre movie theater accident. I had this bandage on my hand and I'd colored it with a red marker. That was probably my best year."

"You sound like you were a little shit," Emily said, squeezing Paige's hand and laughing.

A melancholy air had settled over Paige despite the story she had just told. Emily hoped that swimming would shake Paige out of it. As they walked, Emily resolved not to bring up her wish for Paige to stay there with them at Vallance again, as it always seemed to make her sad. _It's a selfish wish, anyway, _Emily told herself.

Ahead of them, Tuck was quietly telling Jo that they weren't actually breaking into the pool and behind them Charlie was telling Eden that she could now list experience as a cat burglar on her résumé.

Autumn was Paige's favorite time of year, probably because she had always associated it with the excitement of her birthday. But it was also her favorite weather.

During her freshman year at Stanford, Paige had managed to enroll in all afternoon classes. She would get up very early for swim practice, which was from 6 to 8 am Monday through Friday and then have the rest of the morning free until her first class at 12:30 pm.

There was something almost magical about that particular time. Paige would often go back to her dorm to relax, watch something on her computer, or just read and sometimes take a nap if she had stayed up too late the night before. Most days she would call Grandma Hazel as well. It was the first time Paige had been apart from her family for so long and she had missed them more than she wanted to admit.

Grandma Hazel seemed to understand how desperately homesick Paige was without her actually having to say it. She never teased Paige or even asked why she was calling so much. Grandma Hazel would relay the best questions from the previous evening's episode of Jeopardy. She would tell Paige about her father's sermons and the going-ons at church. She would tell her what she was planning on making for dinner that night. And she would listen to Paige go on and on about the other girls on the team, who was best at what stroke, and what she was doing to improve her times. The conversations were often the only balm for Paige's aching heart. She was too ashamed to admit to her parents or Tuck just how unhappy she was because all anyone ever talked about was how college had been the best time of their lives. She'd wondered if their was something wrong with her.

Before she'd left for Stanford, it had never even occurred to Paige that she wouldn't like it. And once she had finally admitted to herself that it wasn't just an adjustment period, that going to college clear across the country just wasn't for her, Paige was much too stubborn to do anything about it. She felt stuck, like she had to live with the decision she'd made because it was the right thing to do and she had a full ride to one of the best universities in the country. She'd just slogged through, from one week to the next.

Those few hours of the morning were when Paige had been happiest. There was a tree just outside her dorm that the sunlight gently filtered through, dappling her bed and walls in the fractured light. She would open the window and enjoy the breeze that played across her face as she lay on her bed and chatted with her grandmother. Paige would close her eyes and imagine that the leaves were changing colors, that the air was growing crisp and heady. In those moments, Stanford almost felt like home.

Being here at Vallance with Tuck and Emily and their friends gave Paige a glimpse at what college might have been like for her, at the happiness she could have had. As the group approached the fitness center, all this was streaming through Paige's mind, filling her with such a heaviness that it felt like someone had filled her pockets with rocks.

Emily unlocked the doors and everyone filed into the enormous, dark building, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous lobby they had entered. When the door was relocked behind them, Emily led everyone down the main hallway and off into a narrow staircase that smelled faintly of chlorine. The stairs led down to another hall that held the entrance to the pool.

Emily pointed out the men's locker room further down the hallway for Tuck as she and the girls headed into the women's room.

"The doors into the pool in the locker rooms should be locked, so let's just meet out here and we can go in the main door together," Emily said quietly. Tuck gave a thumbs up to her and tiptoed into the doorway on the other side of the hall.

Charlie and Eden looked absolutely thrilled to be accomplishing what they still believed to be an illicit activity; Jo looked a great deal more relaxed now that she knew it wasn't. Emily looked over at Paige. She looked so solemn, but her movements were sure and confident. Emily wondered how many locker rooms Paige had been in over the years. Paige disappeared into a bathroom stall to change into her suit while the other four girls stripped down in front of one another; it was nothing they hadn't seen before. When everyone was changed (Paige with a towel wrapped around her waist) they went back into the hall. Tuck was pacing around, a darker shape in the already dark hallway, waiting for them.

Emily hadn't turned on any lights yet, partially because it was more fun that way and also, she wasn't familiar with this part of the building, so she didn't know where the switches were. Whoever had designed the fitness center must have thought it funny to put all the light switches nowhere obvious. They all seemed to be the middle of the room or hidden in some master panel that controlled entire wings of the building. Due to this lack of light, Emily fumbled trying to find the right key. She was also shivering slightly in the hallway wearing just her bikini. Finally, she got the door unlocked and walked into the natatorium, the others following her lead.

Although the pool was on the lower level, it was situated on the side of the building and had a row of large windows running along the very top of the outside wall. Moonlight, and also some street lamps, probably, were shining in and playing off the water, giving the humid room a blue, shimmering glow. It reminded Emily of what a kaleidoscope might look like it only one color segmented and churned in the cylinder. It was mesmerizing.

The others had all moved down to the end of the pool that wasn't roped off into lanes and Emily watched as the three girls all seized Tuck, who was screaming in a shrill voice, by his arms and legs and threw him into the water with a loud splash. Then they proceeded to try to push each other in as Tuck grabbed at their legs from the side of the pool. Emily laughed at them for a moment and then turned around until her eyes fell on Paige.

If the train yard was Emily's cathedral, this was Paige's. She had shed the towel and was crouched at the edge of the pool, skimming her fingers across the very top of the water. Her body was even more than Emily could have imagined. More toned, more soft, more angular, more tense, more calm, more alert. She was an enigma. Her body seemed to ripple as the light reflected off the water and across Paige's creamy skin as she stood up and began to stretch. Her flexibility was incredible. Her limbs looked like ribbons flowing away from her torso and Emily once again acknowledged how similar Paige was to her brother; she undoubtedly had the grace of a dancer.

After a few minutes of stretching, Paige climbed up on one of the diving platforms and bent her body into a crouch Emily had seen swimmers take when she watched the Olympics. She was so beautiful like this, completely in her element. Paige had brought her cap and goggles, but she'd left them at the edge of the pool. Emily understood instinctively that Paige didn't want anything to separate her from the water in these first few laps. Emily knew it because, sometimes, she couldn't help but take a Sharpie and write scraps of poetry all over the skin of her arms and legs, hoping that something of the words themselves would seep into her innermost being. It was this desire to be consumed by what one loved and Emily was no stranger to it.

Emily watched, utterly entranced as Paige let her body go, springing forward with the unbridled joy of a dog just let off its leash. She sliced into the water and it streamed around her briefly before it engulfed her completely. Images and words streamed through Emily's mind as she watched Paige swim, attempting to articulate something of this experience that she might be able to write down later. What she settled on was this: if Emily had been drowning, Paige would have been the prayer that left her blue lips. If life were a pilgrimage, Paige would have been the stream that broke forth when the saint's foot brushed the parched earth, that place toward which Emily was traveling.


	26. Chapter 26: Pool Bottom Tea Party

Paige swam a few laps before coming to rest at the side of the pool, her arms resting on the deck.

"Are you going to get in or what?" Paige asked Emily who was still just staring at her. Paige looked lighter, somehow, than when they'd entered the building and she was grinning over at Emily, who was tying her hair into a loose knot at the back of her head.

"Sorry, I was a little distracted," Emily told her, walking over to the edge of the pool and dipping a toe in tentatively.

"And what exactly were you distracted by?" Paige asked, fishing for a compliment.

"Mostly your tits," Emily said flippantly. "But also your ass in that suit."

She splashed Paige a little with her foot. For some reason she didn't want to reveal how completely captivated she'd felt watching Paige swim. Paige laughed loudly at the boldness of Emily's comment before responding.

"Damn, Fields," Paige said, pushing back from the wall a few feet to give Emily more room to join her. "Come get it, if that's how you feel."

The water was deliciously warm as Emily stepped off the deck and plunged to the bottom of the pool before pushing off the floor and surfacing again. Paige had her wrapped in her arms before Emily could even open her eyes.

"Want to know my favorite thing about being in the water?" Paige said in Emily's ear. She had moved Emily's legs so they were wrapped around her waist and Emily had wrapped her arms around the swimmer's neck. Paige's arms were wrapped tightly around Emily, too, with one arm underneath her ass so that she was holding her up completely.

"What?" Emily asked, sighing contentedly at the feeling of Paige holding her so intimately. She felt completely safe and let Paige use her legs to tread water for them both.

"How everything is nearly weightless," Paige said. "I could hold you like this for hours and never get tired."

"Please do," Emily told her, their eyes locked together.

Paige smiled at that and Emily couldn't help but lean in and kiss her. They both quickly became lost in each other's mouths, the kisses deepening when Paige slid her tongue into Emily's mouth, both of them moaning softly from time to time. They carried on like that for quite some time until Charlie began whooping at them from the other end of the pool. Paige groaned as Emily separated their lips.

"Aren't you supposed to be swimming laps?" she asked, her eyebrows creasing slightly as she looked at Paige.

"Uh, yeah, but kissing you is so much more fun," Paige whined.

"Paige Darlene McCullers!" Emily said sternly.

"Okay, okay," she relented, laughing over that silly name again. She was starting to like it more than her real middle name. "But first you have to have a tea party with me."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Emily figured this had to be code for something.

"You never did that as a kid when you went swimming with your friends?" Paige asked incredulously.

"Uh, no. Please explain," Emily said, her thumbs running across Paige's collarbone as they spoke.

"We swim down to the bottom of the pool and we sit, cross-legged, on the floor, and then we pretend to drink tea. You have to stick your pinky out." Paige said this all so seriously, like it was instructions on how to disarm a bomb, that Emily couldn't help but laugh and bury her head in the side of Paige's neck.

"Oh my god, that's ridiculous!" Emily spluttered, her voice muffled against Paige's neck, in between chuckles. "Why would we do that?"

"Because it's fun!" Paige gave her puppy dogs eyes and a small pout as Emily leaned her head back up. "Come on Em, have a tea party with me!"

"Alright, alright." Emily would've done it anyway but pouty Paige was adorable. "But right after, you have to do your laps," she added, poking Paige sharply in the chest wither forefinger.

"I promise," Paige told her, drawing a cross over her heart.

"Okay, then. Let's have a tea party," Emily said, laughing and reluctantly unwrapping her legs and arms from around Paige.

They moved about three feet apart from each other, both of them treading water and Emily waited for Paige's signal.

"Ready?" Paige asked, expectantly. "One, two, three!"

On three, they dove under the surface of the water and swam all the way down to the bottom of the pool. Paige made it down first and looked back to see where Emily was. She had the biggest grin on her face as Emily reached the floor and joined her, making sure to sit with her legs crossed when Paige pointed out her own posture to remind Emily. Once they were seated facing toward each other, Paige looked her right in the eyes and raised her arms up, pretending to hold a cup and saucer in front of her chest, the pinky of her right hand sticking out. Emily matched her actions and they both pretended to take a few sips of tea before swimming back up to the surface. The entire thing had taken no more than 20 seconds.

As Emily broke the surface, she took in Paige, her arms and legs moving lazily around in the water, an enormous smile plastered on her face, her hair dark and wet around her shoulders. She was everything Emily wanted. She passionate and hardworking but playful, so full of joy, and also brave and smart.

"Are you even real?" Emily said, the words tumbling from her mouth as they entered her mind.

Paige didn't answer her. She just grinned, dove under the water again, swam over to the side of the pool, and hoisted herself out.

"Come here," Paige said to Emily, who was still bobbing in the water dazedly. "Can you sit on the edge and time me on a few laps?"

"Sure," Emily told her, pulling herself up by her arms to sit on the side of the pool. Paige handed her a stopwatch and put her cap and goggles on.

Emily timed Paige a few times from the side of the pool. Pretty soon the others came over and joined them, floating in the lanes around Paige's and taking turns yelling "Go!" and timing her and cheering as Paige swam. Paige couldn't stop smiling. She wished she had could have had such an enthusiastic group of supporters at her meets.

When she was finished, the others wanted to race. Paige taught them all how to dive off the platform and how to properly position themselves for a good entrance into the water. After she showed them the basics, she lined up the four girls for a race.

Eden got scared at the last second and screamed and jumped in feet first instead of diving. Charlie just ended up doing a rather painful belly flop. Jo got off the block okay, but ended up surfacing in Charlie's lane, which didn't matter because Charlie was merely floating and clutching her reddened stomach while she groaned loudly. Emily was the only one who managed the dive and successfully swam to the end of the lane.

"You know," Paige told her proudly, "you would've made a pretty good swimmer."

"Maybe I was in another life," she replied, winking at Paige.

It was nearly 3 am when the group finally made it back to The Log, having parted with Tuck at the edge of campus when he headed in the direction of his dorm. The girls were all still pretty wound up from swimming and Charlie wouldn't stop complaining about how hungry she was, so Jo made everybody one of her famous three-tiered grilled cheese sandwiches. Eden turned on the soundtrack to Rent and the five of them sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and happily devoured the gooey sandwiches as Jo handed them out on plates right from the skillet. It was nearly 4:30 when they all finally headed off to bed after a spirited rendition of Take Me or Leave Me by Charlie and Eden that had the other three collapsed in fits of laughter.

Paige finished bidding good night to Jo, Charlie, and Eden and then turned her attention to Emily who was placing the dirty frying pan in the sink along with the plates they had used.

"I'll let somebody else worry about those tomorrow," Emily said sleepily, referring to the dishes. "God, I'm exhausted." This statement was capped by a well-timed yawn and Paige soon followed suit. They stood there and yawning at each other for a few seconds and then laughed.

"Did you know," Paige told Emily, "that children under 3 years of age don't yawn contagiously? And neither do people with autism."

Emily looked at her quizzically. "You have a strangely in-depth knowledge of yawns," Emily said, moving over and opening the door to the basement.

Paige was just about to tell her good night when Emily, her hand still on the doorknob, turned toward her and said, "You coming?"

"Yes," Paige said simply and followed Emily down to the basement.

They didn't have sex that night. They simply stripped down to their underwear and climbed under the thick quilt on Emily's bed. For a moment they stared at each other, not touching, but looking appraisingly at this place they had ended up in, as if choosing between two paths that stretched before them. Then, wordlessly, Paige turned her back to Emily and scooted back until her body was pressed against the other girl's form. Emily reached behind her, switched off the lamp, and then curled easily around Paige's body, pressing every inch of their frames together in the darkness.

"Little spoon, huh?" Emily whispered into Paige's ear.

"I'm a little surprised, too," Paige replied, laughing lightly.

Emily kissed the nape of Paige's neck and closed her eyes. She drifted to sleep with the smell of chlorine enveloping her and seeping into her dreams. There was another scent, too, that Emily found there at the base of Paige's head, just before she slipped into unconsciousness. It was richer and layered, but bright, as well. It reminded Emily of freshly sharpened pencils, of buying school supplies as a child at the end of summer.


	27. Chapter 27: Playing Hooky

Emily woke up suddenly to the feeling of a body pressing on top of her. It was still pitch black in her room. It always was. She had no idea what time it was, what day it was even, for a moment. All she was aware of was Paige's mouth, hot and wet, moving against her neck. She didn't say anything, just moaned and let her hands run up Paige's sides until she had one hand on the back of her head, pulling her in, eager for more.

Paige moved up to Emily's jaw, sucking, kissing, and biting her skin gently. When she eventually made her way to Emily's mouth, she stopped for a moment, grabbing her by the inside of her thighs; she opened up Emily's legs and settled herself between them. Paige pressed her pubic bone firmly against Emily's core.

"I want you," Paige said roughly as she laced the fingers of both her hands with Emily's, forced them above her head and began kissing her again, slipping her tongue into Emily's desperate mouth. She pressed herself down against Emily's pussy again and again, driven forward by the breathy gasps the motion was eliciting from the girl underneath her as they kissed and sucked at one another's lips and tongues. Emily was already drenched and was sure that Paige could feel it through her underwear. She wanted to ask for more, but she also wanted Paige to dominate her completely and take what she wanted. She was grinding shamelessly against Paige, desperately seeking out pressure as she lifted her hips off the mattress again and again as their kisses grew more frenzied and sloppy.

Finally Paige moved her mouth down to Emily's chest and released her hands so she could pull back the cups of Emily's bra. The fact that neither of them could see each other in this windowless room only heightened the feeling of their bodies against each other. Paige was tugging roughly at Emily's bra now, sliding her hands in to grab her breasts.

"Just…take it off. Take it off, Paige," Emily stuttered out, pushing herself up slightly on her forearms so Paige could reach around behind her and unclasp her bra.

Paige fumbled slightly and Emily thought briefly that this must be the first time Paige had ever taken off another woman's bra. She did very well for her first time. It was only a few seconds before Emily felt the clasp release and the bra slacken around her. Paige pulled the straps off of her shoulders and tossed the garment aside. This brief pause had slowed both girls down slightly and when Paige returned her hands to Emily's breasts she was gentler and less hurried about what she was doing.

It was like being blindfolded. Emily never knew where she would feel Paige's hands and mouth next, and she gasped each time the unexpected contact came. At first Paige just held both of her breasts in her hands, groping them reverently and whispering "Fuck," over and over as she felt Emily's nipples hardening against her palms. Then she began pinching and rolling Emily's nipples in between her fingers, listening to the change in Emily's moans as she did this, feeling her begin to grind against Paige again slowly.

Without warning, Paige slid her hands down onto Emily's stomach and bent down, completely enveloping one of Emily's erect nipples in her hot mouth. Emily's back arched up into Paige, it felt so good.

"Oh god, baby," Emily muttered.

Paige smiled around the nipple that was still in her mouth. She pulled back just enough to say, "I've been waiting for that," before she moved over to Emily's neglected breast and began working it over with her tongue and teeth.

Emily was completely undone by this point. She'd wrapped her legs around Paige's thighs, pulling her roughly against her center. One hand was threaded into Paige's hair and the other was busy trying to unhook Paige's bra, but it was a little difficult to concentrate on that when the girl's tongue was flicking across her nipple.

Emily was just about to tell Paige that she needed _more_, that she wanted her in between her legs, when a loud, beeping noise and insistent vibration startled them both. It was the alarm on Emily's cell phone going off.

"You've got to be kidding me," Paige said, Emily's nipple coming out of her mouth with a loud pop.

"Fuck!" Emily said. She felt out of her mind with desire as she reached over and grabbed her phone to turn off the alarm. "Damn it!"

"Em, calm down," Paige told her. She didn't understand why Emily was so upset. "We don't have to stop."

"Yes, we do," Emily told her. "I have to go to class and then take back the keys to the pool."

She leaned across the bed and switched her lamp on.

"Oh," Paige said sadly, blinking and squinting against the bright light. "You can't skip?"

Emily glanced at the phone in her hand, looking at the time. It really wasn't like her to skip class. Then she glanced at Paige, looking at her entire body for the first time since she'd turned the lamp on.

Her hair was messy and tangled from Emily's hands grabbing and pulling at it. Her eyes looked cloudy and dark. One bra strap had slipped off her shoulder. Her lips were red, swollen, and wet. Emily could have possibly ignored all of this, but when her eyes trailed down lower, to the black pair of boy shorts that were riding low on Paige's hips, it was just too much.

"It's just one class," Emily told herself, and when Paige smiled, she realized she'd said it aloud as well.

"Where was I?" Paige said in a low growl and leaned forward again to kiss Emily's stomach and abs, moving her way up until she took Emily's breast into her mouth again.

It didn't take long for Emily to get completely worked up again. Paige was relentlessly sucking on her tits, moving up to her mouth every now and then to switch things up. Eventually Emily managed to get Paige's bra unhooked. When this happened, though, Paige pulled back nervously and stopped her before the bra had come off completely.

"We should probably talk for a second," Paige said, giving Emily a nervous grin.

"It's okay," Emily said. "We don't have to go all the way if you're not ready. We don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Paige's face became utterly serious as Emily said this and she looked down at their bodies tangled together intimately and seemed to realize what they were inevitably heading toward. Her eyebrows creased and it was fairly evident to Emily that Paige was wondering if she was ready to have her first time with a girl or not.

"Sex is a really big deal," Emily reassured her.

Paige snapped out of her reverie as Emily said this and told her, "You're right. I guess we have two things to talk about."

Emily raised her eyebrows quizzically and looked pointedly at Paige who was still clutching the cups of her bra over her breasts.

"This has been a very eventful week for me," Paige went on. "I mean, I've definitely learned a lot about myself. And you're so…" Paige took a moment to stare appreciatively at Emily's breasts, wet with her own saliva. "You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Or put my mouth on."

Emily giggled at this. She was thoroughly enjoying the way Paige was staring at her.

"Paige?" Emily said, and Paige's eyes snapped back up to her own.

"Sorry," Paige grinned. "Um, what I'm trying to say is, I think my head might explode if I have sex with you so soon."

"Well, we definitely don't want that to happen," Emily told her smiling. "I'm very fond of that head. But I got the feeling that's not what you wanted to talk about originally…"

"No…you're right, again. It wasn't," Paige said, stumbling over her words, "I just wanted to warn you…I mean, it's not a _bad _thing, but some people, I guess, don't really care for them…"

"You're rambling and you're scaring me a little bit," Emily interrupted her.

Paige dropped her head and took a deep breath then looked back up, grimacing, and said, "I have a nipple piercing." She finally let her hands drop and her breasts were completely on display for Emily to see.

Emily felt mesmerized for a moment. Nipple piercing or not, Paige had gorgeous tits.

"Mmmm," Emily breathed out as she took in Paige's full, perky breasts. The nipples were a little darker that she had expected or imagined them to be, and there was small sliver stud that ran through her left one.

"I've never cared before if anybody else liked it," Paige was saying, but in all honesty, Emily wasn't listening anymore. She couldn't help herself; she needed to touch Paige. The nipple piercing was hot and it was turning her on.

Emily took both of Paige's breasts in her hands and squeezed them, then ran her thumbs over the nipples tentatively, paying special attention to the barbell shaped stud underneath her right thumb. Paige's nipples hardened immediately and she let out a loud moan as Emily touched her. She wanted Paige in her mouth, but she'd never been with a girl who had a piercing here before and she didn't know if it changed anything.

"Can I suck on it?" Emily asked, her movements becoming rougher, her hands groping and needy. "Will it hurt you?"

Paige was having trouble focusing now that Emily was touching her like this. Instead of answering, she took Emily's head in one of her hands and pulled her face into her breast where Emily eagerly opened her mouth to taste Paige here for the first time.

The metal felt interesting in her mouth, slightly cooler than Paige's skin as Emily sucked on it and rolled her tongue around the stud. She experimented with it, tugging at it gently with her teeth and noticing it had given Paige a little extra sensitivity on that nipple.

Paige was gone, her head thrown back, her hips bucking, seeking some sort of pressure. But their position didn't give her much to press against. Emily wanted to fuck her desperately, but she knew she needed to respect what Paige had just told her. Instead, she pulled Paige down on top of her from where she had been kneeling, and moved to the other breast for a few minutes. Paige looked so sexy, so wanton, writhing on top of her with Emily torturing her like this.

"Touch yourself," Emily said, pulling back from the girl's breasts momentarily. "If you want."

"Are you sure?" Paige asked, locking eyes with the girl under her. The prospect frightened her slightly, but the thought of touching herself while Emily watched turned her on even more.

Emily merely grabbed Paige's right hand from her own waist, and moved it over to the waistband of Paige's boy shorts. Paige didn't fight it. She didn't want to fight it. She slid her hand down into her wet folds and slid two fingers deep inside and started to fuck herself on top of Emily, her wrist providing enough pressure to appease her throbbing clit.

It was the sexiest thing Emily had ever seen, Paige's hand buried in her pussy, her eyes clamped shut, groans escaping her panting mouth, as Emily continued to suck and pinch her nipples.

Paige knew she was getting close. As she worked her fingers inside herself, she forced her eyes open and was met with Emily's dark stare.

"I want to see you cum, baby," Emily told her and pulled her into a searing kiss.

Paige thrust into herself harder, hitting the spot she was looking for and after a few more thrusts, her orgasm finally hit, causing her to fall forward onto Emily's shoulder, where she bit down to stifle the scream of pleasure coursing through her.

Emily held her as the orgasm racked her body with spasms and then gently rolled her over beside her on the bed so she could recover. Paige had barely returned to earth when she felt Emily grab her hand again. She opened her eyes and looked down to watch as Emily took the hand Paige had just used to fuck herself, brought it up to her mouth and slid Paige's wet fingers deep into her mouth, sucking them clean, and moaning appreciatively. The sight almost made Paige cum again.

"So, you going to tell me about that nipple ring?" Emily said when she had finished licking every bit of cum off Paige's fingers. She rolled over to look at Paige and saw her staring, open mouthed, at her. "I'm sorry. I just had to know what you taste like."

Paige gulped and leaned in and kissed Emily deeply, tasting herself in Emily's mouth and groaning at this new pleasure. Paige closed her eyes as they kissed and when they pulled apart, she kept them closed for a few moments, cementing the memory in her mind. When she opened them again, Emily was smiling at her.

"You taste good," she said simply.

"I went through a very rebellious period when I was 17. Put some black streaks in my hair for a while. Listened to Nirvana a lot ," Paige told her. "I wanted to get my nose pierced, but my mom and dad wouldn't let me. They said I had to uphold a certain image as the pastor's daughter. So, when I turned 18, I went and got a piercing where they couldn't see it. You know, just to stick it to them. I ended up really liking it. But I sort of forget about most of the time. Not many people know I have it."

"Does Tuck know you have it?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, I made him come with me to the tattoo parlor where I had it done. They explained what they were going to do before they took me back into the private room and Tuck nearly passed out just hearing about it."

"Well, it's really sexy," Emily told her, running her fingers over it gently.

Emily's alarm went off on her phone for the second time, then.

"Okay, this time, I really do have to go," she told Paige. "If I don't get those keys back for the pool, I'll lose my job. And it's your fault I have them. And that I'm running late. So you have to come with me!"

Paige groaned as Emily got off the bed and grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her over to the edge of the mattress.

"Alright, alright!" Paige said. "But don't act like you didn't enjoy it…"

Emily smiled broadly. "Oh, of course. It was a very inspiring experience. In fact, I was thinking I'd write a poem about your nipple piercing for my next class."

Emily burst out laughing as Paige looked at her, horrified.


	28. Chapter 28: Mimes and Goodbyes

By the time Paige and Emily had returned from taking the keys back to the fitness center, Tuck had showed up looking for Paige. He was just calling her as the two girls walked in the door.

"Hey, where were you?" Tuck asked.

"I walked over to the fitness center with Emily to return the pool keys," Paige responded.

"Oh," Tuck said, but then his head cocked to the side in confusion. "Did you meet her after class?" He knew Emily's schedule pretty well.

"No, I, uh, sort of skipped this morning," Emily told him, sitting down on the sectional.

"Why? You never miss class…" Tuck looked accusingly over at Paige. "Why do I have a feeling this is your fault?"

"Excuse me!" Paige said defensively. "Why do you automatically assume I'm to blame? It was Emily's decision."

"Oh really?" Tuck asked looking over to Emily to see if she would corroborate.

"Completely my decision," Emily said. "Paige offered to show me her piercing, and I decided to stay."

"Em!" Paige looked distraughtly at the other girl.

Tuck just burst out laughing.

"Please, spare me the details." Tuck said when his laughter had finally subsided. "Moving on, though…it's Paige's last day. What should we do? Besides everyone keeping their shirts on for the rest of the day."

"Tuck, I swear to God I will end your career as a dancer before it even starts!" Paige said, moving toward her brother.

"Okay, okay," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I'm sorry. I just had to get one good jab in!"

"Eden's doing something on the patio in an hour," Emily told them both, looking down at the text she'd just received from Charlie. "Charlie asked me to bring her camera and meet her outside The Corn Husk in 45 minutes."

"It's the fast food grill on campus," Tuck told Paige, answering her unasked question. "Remember? We went there the first time you visited and got some mozzarella sticks."

"Oh yeah! Those were good," Paige said, her stomach rumbling. "Can we go and get some food there? I'm starving."

"Yeah, I bet you're starving…" Tuck mumbled, turning to grab his jacket from the couch. Paige shoved him in the back.

"McCullers and McCullers!" Emily said standing up. "Please behave yourselves."

"Sorry," they both mumbled.

Half an hour later, sitting on the bright patio outside of The Corn Husk, Tuck, Paige, and Emily were all very concentrated on eating the food in front of them. Paige had ordered a breakfast bagel sandwich, mozzarella sticks, tator tots, and a hot dog.

When Charlie spotted them and sat down at the table to join them, she took one look at Paige ravenously devouring the spread before her and said, "Jesus Emily, what did you do to her?"

Emily giggled and put her hand over her mouth to stifle it as Paige looked over angrily, a sting of mozzarella stretching out of her mouth to the half stick she was holding in her hand.

"You know, for the record," Paige said, breaking the string and swallowing the bite of food in her mouth, "I hadn't eaten anything in like eight hours. And since I'm sure you'll know soon enough, anyway," she said turning to Charlie, "I have a nipple piercing," Paige declared dramatically and picked up her hot dog.

"Nice!" Charlie said, nodding appreciatively at Paige. "Can I see it?"

"No you can't see it!" Emily exclaimed, smacking Charlie across the arm.

"Not like that!" Charlie said, turning around to Emily. "Although I'm sure Paige has lovely breasts" –Paige grunted an affirmative sort of noise through her bite of hot dog— "I've thought about getting one myself and I just wanted to see what it was like."

"Well, you'll just have to find someone else's boobs to do that with," Emily told her sternly.

Tuck sighed deeply from across the table. "I love you all," he began, "but I would appreciate it _so much _if we could talk about anything other than my sister's tits."

"I'll be merciful this time, Tuck," Charlie said, "but next time we're talking about Paige's tits, you'll just have to deal with it."

Tuck rolled his eyes at her. "Where's Jo? I need a little sanity here," Tuck asked.

"I think she's in charge of starting the music," Charlie said and looked at the time on her phone. "Shit, it's about to start! Did you get my camera, Em?"

"Yeah," Emily said pulling her bag open and retrieving the camera for Charlie, "What exactly is this going to be anyway?"

"It's a mime mob," Charlie said, and when she was only greeted with blank stares, continued, "You know, like a flash mob, but with miming instead of dancing."

"Does this place exist in some alternative universe or something?" Paige asked with an excited gleam in her eye.

"Nah," Tuck responded. "It's just a liberal arts college."

Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw Jo come around the corner of the building carrying a small, portable iPod speaker. She walked casually up to the table and sat down with everyone.

"Charlie, you should start filming now," Jo said very quietly, and then nodded her head toward the entrance to The Corn Husk, "in that direction."

Charlie nodded and held her camera up discreetly while Jo pressed play on the iPod. Emily recognized the song immediately. It was Beyoncé's _Irreplaceable_. As the first lyrics rang out, a boy in suspenders at one of the tables near them stood up and began making large pointing motions toward another table. Each time, Beyoncé sang "to the left" another mime dressed in plain clothes stood up and pointed until finally, Eden appeared, walking out of the grill. Once she had made it to the middle of the patio, she mimed running into a wall and then promptly became trapped in a box. As the song continued, the other mimes tried various methods of breaking Eden out of the box (pick-ax, saw, grenade) while Eden did a sort of panicky, mime dance where she banged on the walls and screamed silently. Then, at the end, she mimed discovering a door at the back of the box and a key in her pocket. Eden ended the scene by moon walking off of the patio.

When Emily turned back around, Paige had tears streaming down her face from holding back her laughter.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to fly by for Paige. She was doing her best to pretend she wasn't leaving the next morning to go back to California. It was difficult, though, she could tell Emily was trying to follow her lead and not mention it either, but she was becoming more and more withdrawn as the day wore on. By the time the group headed to the cafeteria for dinner, Emily wasn't speaking much at all.

Paige felt bad, but she was trying to spend time with Tuck, too, and make sure he didn't feel neglected before she left. The last thing she needed was an angry brother to deal with when she made it back to Stanford. For the time being, Paige decided, she would focus on Tuck. Then, when he went back to his dorm later, she would spend time with Emily. All night if she had to. Paige hated the fact that she was, albeit unintentionally, the reason for Emily's obvious unhappiness.

After dinner, Jo suggested they watch a movie. Eden and Emily declined on the grounds that they had to do some homework. So while Paige sat in the living room pretending to pay attention to _Drop Dead Gorgeous, _Emily sat in the dining room and pretended to write an essay. It was a long two hours. Paige desperately wanted to talk to Emily, but at the same time, she had no idea what she was going to say. She didn't know what came next for them.

Finally, around 10:30 the movie and subsequent chatting ended and Tuck went back to his dorm. Paige hurried into the dining room, but the only person she found at the table was Eden.

"Where's Emily?" Paige asked Eden, glancing into the kitchen but not spotting her in there either.

"She said she was tired and went to bed like half an hour ago," Eden responded. "But she's not _really _tired. She's just sad you're leaving tomorrow."

"Did she tell you that?" Paige asked, surprised by how honestly Eden had responded.

"No," Eden told her. "I just know Emily and I didn't want you to think she was actually sleeping and leave her alone."

Paige smiled. She had figured that was the case, but it was nice to have her suspicions confirmed by someone who knew Emily so well.

"And Paige?" Eden said as Paige turned to head down to the basement.

"Yeah?" Paige turned back to the other girl.

"It's been nice for all of us, having you here," she said. "Everybody likes you a lot. You're more than welcome to come back and stay with us whenever you want."

Paige was quiet for a moment. She wasn't expecting such a genuine statement from a girl who'd spent the afternoon pretending to be trapped in an invisible box. Her heart swelled at the sentiment.

"Thank you," Paige told Eden. "I really like you guys, too."

Paige nodded a few times, more to herself than Eden, and then turned and left the room before she could ruin the moment with her awkwardness. She didn't often make friends so she didn't know now or if she should proceed with the conversation. It seemed better to leave it short and sweet.

Paige opened the basement door a crack and was met with a sound she wasn't expecting. She poked her head inside the door. The only light seemed to be coming from Emily's laptop and it was gently illuminating her face.

"Em?" Paige called down. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," Emily called out quietly.

Paige proceeded down the stairs carefully, so as not to trip on anything in the dark. Then she went over and sat down next to Emily on the bed.

"Really?" Paige asked, more sure of the sounds coming from the laptop now. "Christmas music? Halloween hasn't even happened yet."

"If you make fun of me," Emily told her stonily, "I will punch you."

"Em," Paige said, reaching out and touching Emily on the leg, "I can't help that I have to leave tomorrow. Please don't be mad at me."

"I don't listen to Christmas music when I'm angry," Emily said, her tone softening. She looked over at Paige, who leaned in quickly and captured her lips in a deep kiss.

"What do you listen to when you're angry?" Paige asked, moving her lips over to a spot underneath Emily's ear.

"That depends," Emily told her, sighing deeply as Paige's mouth moved against her, "on whether I'm trying to stop being angry or not."

"Mmmm," Paige responded, too busy to use real words.

Emily pulled back, however, before Paige could really start anything.

"Unless you've suddenly become ready for sex in the last 12 hours, I would suggest you figure out something else to do with that mouth of yours."

Paige laughed and looked at her with a mischievous gleam in her eye. "Do I really turn you on that much?" Paige asked her, settling for an innocent handhold now that she was no longer allowed to do what she really wanted.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Emily asked incredulously. "You make me so horny I can barely think. Any time you touch me, I'm ready to spread my legs for you."

Now Paige was getting turned on. "Fuck," she said, and then cleared her throat. "We need to think of a wholesome activity to engage in. Quickly."

Emily looked at Paige tentatively. Paige could tell she wanted to say something, but she just pulled up her iTunes and started playing _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. _

"This song was written for the movie _Meet Me in St. Louis. _Did you know that?" Emily said to Paige.

"No. I've never seen it," Paige told her. "Is it good?"

Emily nodded. "Very good," she said. "It's old, made in the 40s. Judy Garland sings this song. She made the composers change the lyrics, though, because they were so depressing."

"What were the original lyrics?" Paige asked curiously.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last," Emily told her.

"Okay, that's super depressing," Paige said. "Good thing they changed it."

"It's still there, though," Emily went on, "the sadness. You can hear it, in the melody, in the way Judy sings it. It's the saddest Christmas song ever written. I don't care, though. It's still my favorite."

"You like being sad?" Paige asked then, trying to wrap her head around why Emily would love this song so much.

"No, I don't _like _being sad," Emily clarified. "But when I am and I listen to this song, it makes me not feel so alone."

"Em…" Paige knew somehow that Emily wouldn't start the conversation they needed to have. Emily looked over at her with a mixture of hope and fear and sadness swimming in her eyes.

"When I leave tomorrow," Paige began, "I don't want things between us to go back to how they were before. I want to talk to you and text you. And maybe we could Skype sometimes, you know? I'm not ready for a girlfriend yet, but I want to keep getting to know you. I wanna keep moving forward."

Emily ran her hands though her hair and sighed. She had a sort of lopsided, appraising expression on her face.

"Fair enough," Emily said, finally.

"Fair enough?" Paige repeated. "That's the only response you have?"

"Well, I've been considering our situation and I don't think you're ready for a girlfriend yet."

"Ouch!" Paige said, but she was laughing. "Brutal honesty there, Em."

"Sorry," she said shrugging. "But you live 2000 miles away and you aren't even really out yet. It would be stupid for us to date right now, as much as I may want that."

Paige felt her heart flare up at this admission, but knew, at the same time, that Emily was right. "Are you saying you're going to wait for me to be ready?" Paige asked her grinning.

Emily laughed. "Mmm, no," she said, "but if we're talking all the time, I doubt I'll develop an interest in anyone else."

"I'll take it!" Paige said happily, and once again, leaned in to kiss Emily, who responded eagerly.

The two stayed up late, just talking and kissing and tying not to let things get too heated. Neither of them wanted to go to sleep and waste what little time they had left together, but, eventually, they dozed off around 3 am.

The next morning was hurried. Paige woke up late and had to rush to take a shower and pack before she and Tuck walked over to the train station. She gave all the girls a general goodbye as Tuck shooed her out the door. It broke Emily's heart. She knew they'd said their goodbyes last night for the most part, but she still wished she could have had one moment alone with Paige before she left.

Emily had just turned her back on the door when she heard it burst open again. Paige spun her around where she stood and kissed her hard, right in front of everyone.

"This was the best week of my life, Emily," Paige told her boldly, holding Emily's face in both of her hands and looking her right in the eye. "This isn't it for us, I promise."

Emily beamed. "I'll see you soon, Paige," she told her, refusing to get too sappy about the girl leaving. "Now go before you miss your train!"

Paige kissed her, on the very tip of the nose, and then ran out the door again.


	29. Chapter 29: The Calm Before November

When Paige arrived back at her dorm at Stanford, she felt like she was walking into an old, poorly scripted movie. The entire trip she had felt sick to her stomach with a strange anxiety she couldn't exactly place. She felt like she was forgetting something, or she was late. Neither or these things were true, however. She made her train in time and then successfully navigated Chicago and the El and made it to the airport in plenty of time. Paige couldn't help but think that if she were on her way _to_ Illinois, this would have been something of which she was proud, but as she was leaving, she had only felt a little disappointed that she didn't get helplessly lost and need to be rescued by her brother and Emily.

Carly, Paige's roommate and a fellow swimmer, was sitting at her desk and reading when Paige arrived.

"Hey, welcome back! You look older…wiser," Carly told her, laughing.

Paige couldn't help but smirk at the comment; Carly had meant it as a joke, but it was startlingly true.

"You have no idea," Paige said, vaguely, throwing her bags down and collapsing on her bed.

"You okay?" Carly asked, glancing over her shoulder, and then looking back down at the Physics book she was studying from.

Paige looked over at her, about to answer, but Carly had already started reading again. Paige didn't answer and Carly didn't ask again. Instead, Paige rolled over onto her side, facing her blank bedroom wall, where the picture of Emily, Jo, Charlie, and Eden had once been taped. A few tears rolled out of the corner of her eye and dripped onto her bedspread. Paige closed her eyes and tried not cry until she eventually fell asleep.

When Paige woke up, the room was dark. For a moment, she wasn't sure what had woken her, but then her phone buzzed in her pocket again. She fished it out, rubbing her eyes sleepily with one hand. Her mouth had that fuzzy, stale feeling that it always got when she cried herself to sleep, worsened perhaps, by the fact that she had done so in complete silence.

The text was from Emily. "Did you get home okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," Paige typed out. "I kept feeling like I forgot something, though." She thought it would be a little too heavy in text to explain that Stanford was definitely not her home, but a place she was being held captive by a free education and a swimming pool.

Emily answered quickly. "You did." Accompanied by a picture of Emily wearing Paige's Vallance sweatshirt. It took Paige a moment to realize she was referring to the sweatshirt, however, and not to herself.

"Should I mail it to you?" Emily asked.

"No," Paige replied. "You should hang on to it. It'll give me a reason to come back soon."

"I didn't realize you needed a reason," Emily sent.

"Sorry. Should've said ANOTHER reason," Paige responded.

"It smells like you," Emily said.

"I should hope so," Paige typed, and then added, "Glad you haven't invited another girl into the basement to wear it yet."

"I only invite girls down if they call me from my stairs and make me eggs benedict," Emily's response read.

Paige smiled and felt a little more at ease, knowing she still had Emily, at least in some way. As she got ready for bed properly, she mentally buckled down, determined to make it through the school year and make sure she kept Emily's interest as well.

Things went well for a couple of weeks. Paige spent her days going to swim practice and class, doing homework whenever she could squeeze it in. And at night she would talk to Emily. Sometimes they would text or talk on the phone, and a couple times they used Skype, too. On one Friday night, Emily had even brought her computer in to the living room and Paige played Trivial Pursuit with the rest of the girls. She wasn't really happy, but she was getting by.

The only problem with this set up was that Paige didn't have much time for anything else. She was using all of her free time to do things she would normally have had time to do at night so that she could talk to Emily. Paige was sure that she could be juggling things more efficiently, but she was new at all this, so she was still trying to figure out how to fit everything in that was important to her. Still, she was dropping the ball on some important things.

The day before Halloween, Paige was spending her free afternoon doing laundry, writing an essay, and trying to organize a Halloween mixer for the swim team, which she had volunteered to do the month before but now wishing she hadn't. She was in the middle of moving a load of t-shirts into the dryer and calling a girl on her team named Lola to make sure she was buying the decorations for the party, when her phone beeped, letting her know she had another call coming in. Paige pulled the phone away from her face for a moment to see who was calling her.

"Lola, I don't care what color of streamers you buy. Halloween is kind of self explanatory," Paige told her, quickly. "I have to take this other call. Use your best judgment. Bye."

Paige switched over to the incoming call and answered.

"Hey Grandma! How are you?"

"Well, hello, dearheart. I'm just checking in," Grandma Hazel said. "I haven't heard from you since your birthday. I was starting to worry."

"God, I know. I'm so sorry," Paige told her, feeling extremely guilty. "I've sucked lately. I've just been so busy."

"That's alright. I know you've got a full load with school and swimming," Grandma Hazel told her warmly. "But I do miss my granddaughter. How was your visit to Illinois? I talked to Tuck a few times, but he said I should ask you!"

Paige smiled at the question. "My visit was really, really good," she gushed. "Actually, I'm kind of dating someone now. Well, it's not really official. I don't know. We're kind of just taking it slow."

"That's wonderful!" Hazel said, and Paige could hear the smile in her voice. "So is a nice young man or a nice young woman having the pleasure of your company?"

Paige laughed at the question. How she could have ever worried her Grandma would judge her seemed silly to Paige now. "It is a very nice young woman. You know, Emily, who I told you about?"

"I wondered if that's who it was," Hazel said. "I'm very happy for you, sweetheart."

"Thanks Grandma," Paige told her, taking in how good it felt to tell someone about her and Emily, even if it was only that they were unofficially dating. "She's really wonderful. Don't tell Mom and Dad yet, though. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell them about all this. "

"You know, it just takes baby steps," Hazel told her encouragingly. "It does not matter how slow you go as long as you don't stop. I think someone famous said that."

"Um, yeah, I think that was Confucius," Paige said.

"There, see? You'll get there in the end if you keep plugging away," Hazel told her, laughing jovially.

The sound of her Grandma's laugh filled Paige with warmth and hope for the future, but it also made her feel even worse for not calling her in so long.

"I'm so sorry I haven't called, Grandma," Paige said, apologizing again. "I've just been trying to figure out how to do everything I normally do _and_ have time to talk to Emily. I don't want to lose her when we've only just started whatever this is between us."

"You know, your grandfather had to leave just after we were married, when he was drafted," Hazel said. "It wasn't easy to have him so far away, but we managed. I'm sure you'll make it work if this is what you want."

Paige knew that her Grandpa Frank had spent a short time in the Navy during World War II, but she hadn't heard her Grandma talk about it in this context before.

"Where was he sent?" she asked curiously. "I don't think you've ever told me."

"He was sent to a Training Station called Farragut in Idaho for basic training," Hazel told her. "I stayed behind here with my folks while he was there."

"What did you do, while he was gone?" Paige asked her.

"I wrote to him. Nearly every day," Hazel said. "I didn't even send some of the letters to him. Some of what I wrote, well, I wouldn't have even called them letters."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you know, some mornings, I'd be drinking my coffee, reading the paper, and I'd forget he wasn't there, sitting at the table with me. I'd turn to say something to him, about what I'd read, or about what I was doing that day," Hazel told her, "and of course, the chair would be empty next to me, so I'd write it down instead. I started carrying around scraps of paper, just so I could write down all those little things you say to someone every day. It helped just to get it down, to get the words out of my mouth in some way."

"That's so sweet," Paige said. "Did you ever give them to him?"

"Well, we were luckier than many. Frank didn't even get drafted until just about a year before the War ended," Hazel said to give Paige some context. "He found them, actually, one day, about a week after he came home. When I told him what they were, he took the whole box of them and forbid me from ever throwing them away. They're still around here, somewhere."

Paige could picture her Grandma sitting in the breakfast room, turning around in her chair, and trying to think where that box of notes might have been stashed.

"It almost sounds like text messages," Paige mused.

"You kids have it much easier these days," Hazel said. "There's all sorts of ways to keep in touch with someone now. See? You'll be all right."

"Yeah, I think I will be," Paige responded, suddenly feeling a lot less stressed. "I promise I won't go so long again without calling you, though."

"I'm glad to hear it!" Hazel said happily. "I miss our conversations."

"I love you a lot, Grandma," Paige said.

"I love you, too, dear. I'll let you go now and get back to what you were doing. We'll talk again soon."

"Yes," Paige reassured her grandma, and herself, "we will. Bye, Grandma."

The next day, Paige only had one class in the morning, after which, she and the some other girls from the swim team spent a couple hours decorating the house where they were holding the Halloween party in that night. Paige was going as a pirate. She'd bought one of those pre-packaged, overpriced costumes from one of the party stores in town, but honestly, she wasn't putting much effort into her costume compared to most of the other girls. They were all dressing to impress; those who were single were hoping to catch the eye of some of the male swimmers who would be there that night. Paige, on the other hand, was trying to avoid catching anyone's eye. Especially those of the males.

Everything turned out pretty well. Lola, whose house it was, had picked some cool decorations and one of the other girls had bought one of those cheesy CDs with "spooky" sounds on it. At the end of the day, it was a normal Halloween party, though. Nothing special, Paige decided, when she walked in that night. She was only there for about two hours. She danced some and drank her fair share of beer, but when a blonde guy, who Paige thought was named Stu, came over and tried to chat her up, she pretended like she was going to puke, then ducked out and went back to the dorm.

When she got back to the room she pulled out her phone and called Emily, who answered after the first ring. Due to the time difference, it was pretty late in Illinois, so Paige was a little surprised at the prompt response.

"Paige," Emily said huskily. "I'm in a seashell bra right now."

Paige laughed. She could hear that Emily was pretty drunk just by the sound of her voice.

"That sounds lovely" she replied, still laughing. Emily had already told her about her mermaid costume, so she wasn't surprised by this information. "And how is your fin doing?"

"Ugh, it was too hard to walk in, so I took it off," Emily huffed.

"So you're walking around campus in a seashell bra and your underwear?" Paige questioned.

"No!" Emily replied laughing. "Eden had some old sheets, so we tore them up and wound them around my legs and stuff, mummy-style. I'm a mermmy! Get it?"

Paige laughed along with Emily as she completely lost it over her mermaid/mummy joke.

"You are ridiculous, you know that?" Paige said, shaking her head.

"I'm just misunderstood. All the great artists are under appreciated when they're alive," Emily said, in a haughty tone. Paige couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

"I wish I could see your dumb costume and unwrap you," Paige told her, licking her lips at the thought. "Actually our costumes sort of go together. Pirates fuck mermaids, right?"

"Mmmm, I think you're thinking of sirens," Emily told her, slurring slightly. "And they lure them in, but then they kill them and bash their ships up on rocks and stuff."

"Okay, then," Paige said laughing some more. "I was trying to be sexy, there, Em."

"Oh, baby! I'm sorry," Emily said, clearly too drunk for subtleties. "I'm not a siren, though! I'm a mermmy. Mermmies totally fuck pirates! We'd be so sexy together."

"There is no way I can take you seriously when you say the word 'mermmy,'" Paige chuckled. "You're lucky you're an adorable drunk."

"You're lucky you're not here," Emily replied, "cuz there would be a drunk mermy taking advantage of you."

"Where are you?" Paige asked, deciding to change the subject instead of attempting to explain that Emily's last comment made very little sense. "Are you by yourself?" She didn't like the idea of Emily wandering around alone when she was so drunk.

"No, Jo is here. She keeps giving me strange looks and trying to make me hang up," Emily told her, then said, "What?" her voice sounding a little further away, like she had turned her head. There was silence for a moment. "Jo says I'm making a fool of myself."

"You can tell Jo I don't care how drunk you are, I still want to talk to you," Paige told Emily, smiling.

"Paige says she doesn't care if I'm stupid!" Emily said loudly, obviously speaking to Jo, then let out a long sigh into the phone. "I think I have to go to sleep, Paigey," Emily told her. "We're like, two little blocks away from home now."

"Okay," Paige told her, wishing Emily wasn't quite so drunk, so that they could talk longer. "Sleep well, Em."

"You, too," Emily said in a sweet tone. "And look out for sirens, okay? No one gets to lure you onto sharp rocks but me."

Paige laughed. "I'll be careful. Bye."

After she hung up, Paige took off her costume and took a shower. She felt gross after the party. She always felt sticky and grimy after events like that, where she was stuck in a stuffy room with a bunch of drunk college kids. It wasn't really her scene. She preferred smaller crowds and activities that included laughter and talking. She preferred being at The Log with Emily and her friends, she admitted to herself as she climbed into bed.

Paige woke up the next morning to the sound of her phone ringing. She looked at the screen, saw that it was her mother, and silenced the call. She would just call her back later, at a normal hour, Paige thought, seeing it was barely 7 am. She'd just shut her eyes again, when the phone started ringing for a second time. Paige's eyes snapped open wider this time. Her mother rarely tried to get a hold of her in such a persistent manner, even when they hadn't spoken in a while. She got out of bed and took her phone with her to the hall before she answered so she wouldn't bother her hung-over roommate.

"Mom?" Paige said, answering. "What's wrong?"

A deep sigh met Paige's ear from the other end of the line and she was struck, oddly, in that early morning moment, by how she could recognize her mother simply by the sound of her breath. "Sweetheart, it's your grandmother."


	30. Chapter 30: The Edge of the Precipice

"What?" Paige's voice came out in a broken, croaky whisper. "She's…is she…"

"No, Paige, just listen to me before you react," her mother told her calmly. She was aware of how apt Paige was of jumping to the worst conclusions. "Your grandmother had a very bad fall last night. Her right leg was broken in three places. She's about to go into surgery."

Paige's head was spinning. She felt like she was going to be sick or faint, or maybe both. She quickly sat down in the middle of the hallway she was standing in and leaned her head down between her knees while she continued to talk. "But, what happened? How did she fall? What was she doing?"

"Well, some trick-or-treaters came to the door last night," her mother began, "and she was hurrying to answer and she had a big bowl of candy in her arms. She just lost her balance and fell. It was lucky that it happened when it did because the family at the door heard her calling for help. The door was unlocked so they were able to stay with her until the ambulance arrived."

"What do you mean it was lucky?!" Paige shouted angrily. "How can you say that?"

"Paige, you need to calm down," her mother told her. Paige felt she was being annoyingly blasé about the whole situation. "I know that you're scared, but yelling at me isn't going to help anything."

"Well, how long is the surgery going to take?" Paige asked, unwilling to believe that grandma wasn't going to wake up and be fine at the end of all of this.

"If she pulls through," her mother said, "the doctor told us it could take up to 6 hours. She's very old, though, Paige. It's always a risk to put someone elderly under anesthesia."

"Stop talking about her like she's some random old woman we don't know! She's going to be fine!" Paige shouted again.

"Paige Hazel McCullers, I don't care how upset you are," her mother said in a harsh tone, "you will not speak to me like that. You are not the only one who's worried here. But it's not going to help anything if we panic before we know if she makes it through this surgery or not."

Paige's swirling emotions finally boiled over as her mother scolded her. She felt like she was 5 years old again. The whole situation was just too much. Tears—angry, sad, scared, confused, uncertain—one for every emotion coursing through her body began to spill out of Paige's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she stuttered out, trying to get a hold of herself once more.

"Deep breaths, sweetheart," her mother told her soothingly. Paige could almost feel her mother's hand rubbing broad strokes around her back, the way she always did when Paige was upset. "Circle, circle, breath," her mother chanted to her. It was an old breathing exercise Paige had picked up when she first started swimming as a kid, which had become a surefire way to calm and refocus Paige in almost any situation. After a few minutes of this, her head felt less like it was in the throws a monsoon and more like it was simply being covered in a cold, consistent drizzle.

"I have more I need to tell you when you're ready," her mother spoke into the silence that had settled between them on the line.

By this time, Paige was little more than a ball curled up on herself, her arms and head tucked between her knees, her phone pressed against her face by her forearm, and her hands clutching each other on top of her head. She felt like she was huddled in a bomb shelter, bracing herself for the next impact.

"Yeah," Paige spoke, finally. "Okay."

"If Grandma Hazel makes it through this, she's going to have a long road ahead of her. A long recovery, I mean. She won't be able to get around the way she used to," Paige's mother explained to her. "She won't be able to live by herself at the house anymore. She's going to need help. We're going to have to find a nursing home for her."

Just when she'd finally felt that she was successfully collecting herself again, Paige felt her head begin to spin wildly. Her heartbeat was frantic now.

"No," she spoke firmly. "No, no, no. Grandma can't go to live in one of those places!" Paige's head filled with the sad images and horrible smells from the last few years of one of her great aunt's lives. Paige knew in that moment that she would do anything to make sure that her grandma never had to live in one of those bleak, lonely places.

"Paige, your father has been talking to your uncles all morning," her mother told her, referring to her dad's two older brothers. "It's the only solution, I'm afraid. We have to consider everyone involved. You're uncles live further away so the burden would just fall to your father and I. There's the money involved if we were to hire someone to be at the house with her…besides, your grandmother wouldn't take kindly to us just barging in to the house with her. It's just not that simple."

"Is Dad there?" Paige asked, a wild idea coming into her head, calming her as nothing had before.

"Of course, he's right next to me," her mother responded.

"Will you put him on?" Paige requested, readying herself to convince her father to agree to her fledgling plan.

* * *

Emily cracked open one eye and stared into the usual dark of her room, her head throbbing. Something was buzzing. She reached for her phone, but when she grabbed it, it was still and silent. As she switched it on though, she saw, by the light of her screen, that there was definitely someone in her bed with her. Her blanket, though, covered the lumpy mass and she couldn't tell who it was. Emily's mind was reeling and she felt a little panic beginning to build in her chest. She could hardly remember how she'd even gotten home last night. Who the hell was in her bed? She sent out a little prayer into the universe that she hadn't done something truly stupid. Emily hoped that for some reason one of the girls had fallen asleep in her bed. Even as she hoped this, though, she strained her ears, and thought she could hear all three of her housemates chatting in the kitchen above her. It was Sunday, 10:30 am. They were all up there having pancakes. Emily stared at the body next to her and started to sweat. The buzzing started again and she realized that it must be her bedmate's phone ringing. Steeling herself for the worst, she kicked the person next to her.

"Uhhhh," a deep voice sounded next to her. "Don't!" The voice was muffled, but unmistakable. Emily sighed heavily, releasing the breath she'd been holding.

"Tuck," she said, throwing the top half of her body on top of the boy. "Why are you in my bed?"

"You really don't remember?" he muttered sleepily.

"Um," Emily vaguely remembered Paige's voice in her ear, the phone call coming back to her in bits and pieces, but it was the last thing she could recall. "No. The last thing I remember is talking to Paige."

"Well, we ran into each other just around the corner," Tuck explained, "and you demanded that I come home with you because…what was it you said? Oh, that's right. You needed a McCullers in your bed, apparently."

"Oh no," Emily said laughing. "I'm sorry. That's awkward."

"That's alright," Tuck told her, chuckling with her. "I'm pretty sure Paige would kill me if I turned you down and _someone else _ended up in your bed. You let me know whenever you need a bed buddy."

"Thanks for the offer. You're phone's been ringing, by the way," Emily told him as she moved off of Tuck's back.

"Turn the lamp on," Tuck said. "I don't even know where my phone is."

Emily switched on her lamp and couldn't help but let out another laugh as she took in the tousled haired Tuck sitting up now with the blanket still covering half of his body. He was still wearing his high-collared Dracula cape with white makeup smeared all over his face. They looked at each other for a moment, just shaking their heads.

"Nice seashells," Tuck told her, grinning.

"We're a hot mess," Emily told him, adjusting her bra and noticing she only had on underwear on her lower half. "Thank god it was you in the bed."

Tuck eventually located his phone laying on the side of his the bed with his vampire teeth. Emily slipped on some sweatpants as he turned the screen on and noticed his face fall, his eyebrows creasing with worry as he used one hand to untie the cape around his neck.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked, her mind immediately going to Paige.

"I'm not sure," Tuck said distractedly. "I…I've gotta go, Em," he said, standing up and heading for the stairs. "My mom called me six times," he tossed over his shoulder as he hurried up the stairs.

Emily exchanged her seashell bra for a loose t-shirt and quickly sent a text to Paige. She couldn't help but worry that something might have happened to her. She didn't want to sound clingy or overreact to something that hadn't even happened, though, so she decided to just ask how Paige was this morning and hope the other girl would answer quickly so Emily would know she was alright.

Emily made her way upstairs and was met by the sight of her three friends sitting together on the kitchen floor with plates of pancakes in their laps.

"Hey Em," Jo said, standing up and pulling out a plate of pancakes for her from the microwave. "They're still warm," she told her, handing the plate to Emily.

"What happened down there?" Charlie asked. "Tuck ran out of here like you offered to give him a blow job or something."

"Must you be so crude on Sundays?" Eden muttered, rolling her eyes. Charlie responded by stuffing her own forkful of pancakes into Eden's mouth. Eden scowled at her, but ate the bite anyway.

"No," Emily said sitting down to join the others. "He had six missed calls from his mom. I'm sure he was worried there was family emergency or something."

"Is Paige okay?" Jo asked with a worried look crossing her features as she turned to look at Emily.

"I don't know," Emily said, glancing at her phone as she said it. "I sent her a text, but she hasn't answered yet."

"Em, she's probably fine," Eden said grabbing her hand. "She's probably just dealing with whatever their mom called Tuck for, you know? But I'm sure nothing's happened to her. Tuck would have told you, you know he would."

Emily shook her head lightly. "You're right," she told Eden. Tuck knew how much Emily cared about Paige. He would have told her if the emergency was about her. With that thought calming her, Emily dug into her pancakes.

* * *

"Hi, honey," Paige's father said as he took the phone from his wife. "Are you alright?"

"Dad, I can take care of Grandma," Paige blurted out. "She can't go to a nursing home. She just can't. I can stay with her, at the house. I know she wouldn't mind if I was there. And I can help her. I want to."

"Paige, I appreciate what you're offering," her Dad began, "but you're place is at school. We'd never ask you to leave your life at Stanford."

"Dad, I want to leave," Paige said, the truth finally rushing out of her mouth like blood from a wound. "I hate it here, Dad. I'm miserable. I don't want to stay! Please! I can take care of Grandma. I want to."

"Honey, what are you talking about?" her dad asked, dumbfounded by what she'd just admitted to him.

"I've never liked it here," Paige said, starting to cry again. "I'm so lonely, Dad. But I was embarrassed and I had my scholarship. I was just going to stay and deal with it until I graduated. But now…"

"Paige, why didn't you tell us? You know we would've helped you figure something out."

"I just felt so stupid, Dad," Paige admitted. "Like I would come off as some ungrateful brat if I told you I wanted to go somewhere else. I'm sorry. I should've told you."

Her father let out a heavy sigh on the other side of the country. "I'm sorry, honey," he began when he spoke again, "but your education is the most important thing. Even if you don't want to stay at Stanford, you need to stay in school."

"I will!" Paige assured him immediately. "But why can't I just transfer to Philly's Community College and take classes part time while I help Grandma? You're wrong, Dad. My education is _not _the most important thing."

"You're not going to drop this, are you?" her father asked her wearily.

"It's too important to drop it," Paige said, but her voice was pleading with him still. "Daddy, I'd never be able to forgive myself if Grandma had to go live in some gross nursing home."

Paige hadn't called her father "Daddy" in about 10 years. She hadn't done it on purpose. It had slipped out because she was feeling so scared and alone and desperately sad. Nonetheless, hearing his daughter use this name for him after so long softened his resolve.

"If she makes it through surgery…" he said, trailing off as he thought of the very real possibility of his mother dying. He exhaled again loudly and began again. "If Mom makes it out of surgery, we'll start making arrangements for you to move back here and into the house with her."

"Thank you!" Paige said in a relieved shout. "Thank you, Dad."

"No, thank you, honey," her father said. "I didn't want that life for her either, you know. You're answering a lot of prayers right now, Paige, by offering to do this for your grandmother. I'm very proud of you."

"Well, she always took care of Tuck and I," Paige said, unsure how to handle the heaviness of what her father had just told her. Then she heard a shuffling on the other end of the line.

"Tuck is calling now, actually, so I'm going to have go," her father told her hurriedly. "We'll call again as soon as she's out of surgery. I love you, Paige," he said and hung up before she could even respond.

As Paige sat there in the hallway of her dorm, the weight of what she had just offered to do settled heavily on her body. She felt like she was sitting at the very edge of a precipice and looking over. She knew, somehow, that whatever happened, whatever came next, she would be repelling into this next phase of her life, in great leaps of descent, towards a bottom she couldn't yet see.

Paige wiped her face with the bottom of her t-shirt and noticed the text she'd received from Emily sometime during her call with her parents. Paige just had a feeling that, somehow, Emily knew that something was wrong. But Paige felt so far away from her, from everyone in her life, at this moment. Emily had asked her how she was, but in all honesty, Paige didn't know how to answer. She decided she might as well carry on with the truth, however, as she typed out her response.

* * *

On the floor of the kitchen in The Log, Emily's phone vibrated loudly against the tile where it was laying next to her. She grabbed it anxiously and read the response Paige had sent her.

"I don't know. I'll call you later," was all that Paige had responded with.

Emily stared at it numbly, the vague, distant response not doing anything to assuage her worries.

"Em?" Charlie asked.

Emily realized, as she looked up at the concerned faces of her friends, that she must have been making an expression of dread as she considered what Paige's response could mean.

"It was Paige, but…"she told them all in a hollow tone. "Something's wrong. I don't know what. She said she'd call me later."


	31. Chapter 31: Subcutaneous

One summer, Paige's father had been offered a job at a church camp in Nebraska for two weeks. The camp was called Westminster Woods. Her father was actually a very outdoorsy man. Nick had worked at similar camps as a counselor when he was a teenager and college student and had even considered becoming a park ranger before deciding to go to seminary to get his Masters of Divinity and become a pastor. The camp was for kids between 8 and 12 years old, and the director had offered to let Tuck and Paige attend for free if their Dad accepted the job. The camp was Presbyterian, but was focused on teaching kids outdoor skills, which was where Nick had come in; how to paddle a canoe, how to build a fire, how to chop wood, how to identify plants and trees. Paige had loved everything about it; sleeping in the sparse cabin on the top of a bunk bed, singing camp songs after every meal, racing her friends to the lake every day to swim, taking the canoes out barefoot, running around with flashlights at night, and building camp fires to make smores. It was a small, simple camp with only about 20 campers, but Paige preferred it that way.

It was midweek when it happened, Wednesday or Thursday maybe. Paige had been goofing off with her best friend, who slept on the bunk opposite her. They were both in their beds and she was being careless and laughing at something when she rolled over and fell from the top bunk, landing hard on the wooden planks of the floor flat on her back. It was one of the worst things Paige had yet experienced in her short life. She'd never had the wind knocked out of her like that before. All she knew was that she couldn't breathe. She was suffocating; her lungs had cracked open inside of her and wouldn't hold air anymore. She was terrified; panic had quickly overtaken her.

The counselor, a woman whose name Paige had long since forgotten, was able to calm her down enough to realize that she could still breathe. Paige wanted her father, though, and she had started to cry, so the counselor sent the other girls to fetch Nick from his cabin on the other side of the camp. They had flown out into the night, those nine girls, like a flock of geese, the very air seeming to split apart as they ran, screaming for Nick, yelling that Paige was hurt, that she had fallen out of her bunk. Paige could hear them from where she felt buried half way in the floor, for minutes after they'd raced out the door.

When Nick arrived, he scooped Paige up into his arms and held her while she cried. She wasn't hurt, just scared, and he knew that. Paige could still recall the feel of her father's stubble under her small hands as he cradled her and spoke softly in her ear to calm her down. After Paige had stopped crying, Nick had moved her bedding on to the lower bunk and helped her into bed. The he told her a story about a dog named Mike, the way he did at home, until she was asleep.

* * *

Paige was sitting, catatonic, still in the hallway outside her dorm room. It felt the same, exactly the same as when she'd fallen out of her bunk that summer. She was sinking into the floor, unable to move or breathe, just waiting for her father to come and rescue her, to make this scary experience dissipate with his mere presence. She wanted to put her hands on his unshaved cheeks and hear him tell her that everything would be all right. Somewhere, lost in this haze, Paige's phone buzzed against her palm. It was Tuck.

"Call me. Now," the text demanded of her. She clicked the screen back off, however. She didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. Not even her brother. Her chest felt tight as her thoughts drifted back to the voices that had once screamed out into the silence of a Nebraska evening, bringing her father to her. Paige wished desperately that she had a flock of women to vocalize her fear for her now.

Some minutes later, her phone buzzed again. This time it was Emily, answering her last text.

"Please do," it said, in reference to Paige calling her later. "I'm worried about you."

Paige stood slowly after she read it, resigned to the fact that no help was coming, and moved back into the safety of her room, hoping to clear her head a little.

Carly was just waking up, moving around her side of the room, getting ready for the day. It was Sunday, Paige remembered, but Carly usually went to church. Usually, Carly's habit of getting up early and waking Paige on the only day of the week she was able to sleep in annoyed the crap out of her. Just this once, Paige was thankful. She would much prefer to be alone just now.

"You're up early," Carly said in greeting, glancing at Paige, who was sure the sadness wafting off of her was about to set off the fire alarm in the building.

"Yeah, I had a shitty morning," Paige said. "Sorry if I woke you."

"No, you didn't," Carly responded. "I'm meeting Evan in a few so we can grab some breakfast before church." She seemed completely oblivious to anything happening in Paige's life.

_Just as well, _Paige thought as she sat down numbly at her desk and opened her laptop to look up possible flights for the next two days and spared a few moments to wonder who her father had been able to call in last minute to cover his church service.

Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at it briefly, expecting it to be Tuck chastising her for not calling him during a family crisis. She had to do a double take, though, and look down at the screen more carefully to make sure she was reading it right. Acts of kindness always caught Paige off guard.

"Hey Paige," the text read. "I hope you're okay. I'm here if you need anyone to talk to or if you need anything else. Just let me know."

Paige thought the smoke-like sadness around her must have thickened because her vision had blurred as she read the text, but as she blinked, she realized it was because tears had welled up in her eyes.

Immediately after she'd taken in this text, her phone buzzed again. _Another one? _Paige thought as she tapped on the new message, but it was from a different sender.

"Yo, I'm praying for you and your fam," this one said. Brief but genuine, Paige acknowledged, the smallest of smiles flitting across her face.

Another text streamed into her phone from across the country. Paige could picture them all bent over their respective phones and eating their pancakes as she read this one.

"Paige, when tragedy strikes, I always sing _Que Sera, Sera_ made famous by the great Doris Day. You know what? I'll just post the video of her singing it from _The Man Who Knew Too Much _on your facebook. Don't' worry, it's very uplifting."

Paige laughed aloud at this last text, tears streaming freely down her face.

"Someone's popular!" Carly threw out from her desk where she was applying makeup. Paige just stared incredulously at her roommates face, reflected at her from the mirror Carly had leaned against a stack of books. This woman who was sitting mere feet from her had not noticed her tears and had no idea that she was in the throws of emotional turmoil. Yet, Jo, Charlie, and Eden, 2000 miles away and with no real information on what was happening with her grandmother, were more in tune with what was happening in her life.

Emily had sent one more text, Paige noticed, as she looked away from Carly's unintentional callousness.

"You are so strong, Paige," Emily said. "And infinitely more loved."

Grandma Hazel had a mantra that she had often repeated to Paige over the years when someone picked on her at school or the girls at church bullied her.

"Kill them with kindness," Hazel had said, with no further explanation, except for the occasional wink. Paige had believed, up until this very moment, that she understood what her grandma was saying to her when she told her this, that it was merely a tactic a person could employ to make their enemies feel guilty. But that wasn't it, at least not entirely, Paige realized. Sitting there at her desk, she felt absolutely slain.

* * *

In Illinois, Emily was washing the dishes to keep herself busy while she waited for Paige's call. The girls were milling around behind her, putting away the remains of their breakfast. Emily glanced back at them, though, when she felt their movements still. They were all standing in a huddle, working intently on something on their phones.

"What are you guys doing?" Emily questioned.

"Texting Paige," Charlie responded distractedly as she typed. "Duh. She needs her friends."

* * *

Paige was not a person of many possessions. Her parents were the kind of people that performed rigorous spring-cleaning every year, without fail. Part of this annual event in the McCullers household always involved Tuck and Paige meticulously sorting through all their possessions and deciding what they absolutely needed and what they did not. What was deemed unnecessary was donated to Goodwill. While this lifestyle had undoubtedly instilled in Paige many good qualities, it also gave her dorm room a rather bleak atmosphere.

She had a few framed photos on her desk: a typical, family portrait of Paige, Tuck, and their parents wearing brightly colored sweaters and blue jeans while posed in an outdoor, autumn setting; one from the back of Tuck and Paige on either side of her grandmother while she played the piano and they all sang; a snapshot of the family dog, Duke, dragging a tree branch through the backyard; the last was Paige's favorite and it pictured herself, looking thoroughly annoyed, and Tuck, thoroughly elated, in the crowd at a Jonas Brothers concert. Paige had also pulled back out the photo of Emily and her friends in the snow and it was leaning, frame-less, by the others.

Paige had a paperback set of the Harry Potter books, though, no one knew that's what they were because at some point during her adolescence, she had felt the need to cover them all in duct tape. Her parents had offered to buy her a new set numerous times after she'd outgrown this phase, but they were still readable and that was really all Paige cared about. She also had an old Betty Crocker cookbook that had belonged Grandma Hazel until she had given it to Paige. She had a plain black Bible, which she hadn't opened in about two years, a copy of _Little Women_, _The Cider House Rules_, and her favorite novels from childhood, _Where the Red Fern Grows_ and _The Hobbit_. She read each of these (other than the Bible and the cookbook) at least once a year.

Paige had two posters. One was of the chocolate factory scene from _I Love Lucy_. The other was map of the continental United States with tacks stuck in it to show where she had traveled. There weren't many tacks, yet, but most of them were clustered in the northeast from the various road trips she and Tuck had taken in high school.

She had a thick black binder where she kept her vast movie and television show collection. This was the only area of her life that Paige felt she probably had more than she really needed, but she only ever kept the discs themselves and recycled the cases the moment she bought them. That was how she justified the excess in her mind, anyway.

Paige's collection of Batman comic books was stored in a plastic tub under her bed. She had an iPod dock that doubled as speakers and an alarm clock. She had a lamp and a green bowl that she kept her keys and loose change in. She also had a teddy bear named Jolene that she kept squashed underneath her pillow so no one would see it and find out she still slept with her childhood teddy bear

The rest of her possessions, other than clothing and personal care items, consisted of school and swimming paraphernalia—text books, notebooks, pens and pencils, swim caps and googles.

After Carly left for church with her boyfriend, Paige, remembering that she still had at least 5 hours to kill, decided to pack. She went down to the basement of her dorm to the area where the recycling was sorted and located some sturdy boxes. She took them upstairs along with a few neglected newspapers. Paige found a small amount of hope in the fact that somewhere in this sea of electronic media that was so readily available at all hours, there was a kid who was still regularly buying newspapers somewhere in her building.

Back in her room, she began to wrap her worldly possessions in the news; the tragic and sad stories of death, the obituaries, the bombings and drownings. But there were also the comics and the weather forecast, a list of upcoming concerts, and the horoscopes. It only took three cardboard boxes and two peeled apart papers to pack everything she wouldn't be putting in her suitcases.

When Paige finished, her hands were gloriously dingy with the smudged ink from the newspapers. It made her think of her grandparents reading the paper every morning at breakfast. It made her think of Emily, the inkiness that was inherent to her. It made her want to get a tattoo. Paige stared at her blackened hands for a long time.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, her vibrating phone pulled her from her reverie. For a moment, her heart leapt into her throat, thinking it might be her mother or father calling to give her bad news, but it was just Tuck. He'd finally run out of patience with her, apparently.

Paige took a deep breath, ensuring the functionality of her lungs, and answered.

"Hey," was all she got out before Tuck started in on her.

"Are you fucking serious, Paige? You're just going to drop out of Stanford. STANFORD. So you can move back home and go to community college?" He was yelling.

"Don't start, Tuck, okay?" Paige snapped back at him. Not even her grandma possibly dying at this very moment could make Paige back down in a fight with her brother. "You have no idea how unhappy I've been."

"Well, that's your own fucking fault isn't it? I didn't realize you were keeping so much from me!" Tuck said accusingly. "You're telling me you don't like being on one of the best swim teams in the country?"

"It's literally the only thing I like about being here. It's just not enough," Paige muttered dejectedly, the fight trickling out of her, shame filling her body instead.

"You have a full ride, for fucks sake!" Tuck yelled.

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't feel horrible enough about this already, you prick?" Paige was getting riled up again, her emotions peaking and dropping rapidly as she paced around her room. "I'm about five seconds away from hanging up on you, so if there was anything else you wanted to talk about, oh, I don't know," Paige quipped sarcastically, "like our dying grandmother, you should say something now!"

"She isn't dying," Tuck said in a lower voice. "She's going to be fine. There's no way that a broken leg is going to kill Hazel McCullers. She's too strong for that."

"Well, I'm glad you're so fucking sure about that," Paige spat back at him. "Nothing ever phases you, does it?"

"I think the more pressing matter is that you're about to ruin your entire future because you can't figure out how to make any friends," Tuck said, triumphant in the silence that answered him on Paige's side of the line telling him he had hit the nail on the head.

"You're such a…" Paige stuttered, finding her voice again, and angrier than ever. "…a…"

"Yes?" Tuck chided her.

"You're such a BUTTHOLE!" Paige screamed.

"You're a BUTTHOLE!" Tuck yelled back.

"Yeah, well," Paige said chuckling dryly, "at least I don't like fucking them!"

"Vaginas are disgusting and everyone knows it!" Tuck yelled.

"Says the TWINK!" Paige had lost it completely.

"DYKE!" Tuck threw back at her, equally past the point of caring what exactly he was saying to his sister.

"COCK SUCKER!"

"CARPET MUNCHER!"

"CUM GUZZLER!"

"I HATE YOU!"

"FUCK OFF!"

The twins hung up on each other at the same time, but of course, they didn't know that.

* * *

Tuck was fuming when he threw open the door of The Log and slammed it shut again behind him.

"GOOD LUCK!" he yelled at Emily and stomped upstairs to talk to Jo. He couldn't talk to Emily when he was so angry with Paige.

Emily wasn't sure what had just happened, or what Tuck had meant by that. She felt shell shocked.

"Do you want me to braid your hair?" Eden asked, giving Emily a sympathetic look from the other side of the couch.

"Will you straighten it first?" Emily said frowning sadly. Eden nodded at her. "Okay."

Emily moved to sit on the floor in front of Eden. As the girl behind her slowly straightened her black locks and then neatly joined all the strands into a loose French braid, Emily pulled her computer onto her lap and started composing an email to Paige.

* * *

After her fight with Tuck, Paige had laid down on her bed in a huff and drifted into a fitful sleep. When her phone rang loudly into the half-empty room, Paige sat up, disoriented, her heart pounding. Her eyes searched frantically for her phone. She couldn't remember where she had put it after talking to Tuck and she felt confused being jarred from sleep so suddenly. Finally she spotted it on her desk and leapt up to grab it.

"Dad?" she said groggily as she answered.

"Are you alright, honey?" Nick asked, hearing that something was off in his daughter's voice.

"Yeah, I just fell asleep waiting for you to call back," Paige explained. "Is she okay?"

"You grandma made it out of surgery just fine," he assured her, then paused for a long moment. "Paige, are you sure you want to move in with her? You've had a few hours to think about it now. I'll understand if you've changed your mind about it. This is a big decision."

"No…no," Paige said quietly. "I'm sure. I can't stay here, Dad. I think this is what I'm supposed to do. I just…feel it in my heart."

"I know what you mean," he told his daughter gently. "Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Tomorrow morning, I'll call Stanford and explain everything. I'll take care of getting you officially un-enrolled and see if there's anything Stanford can do to make your transfer to CCP easier. You need to talk to your Coach, though, and apologize to her."

"Yeah, I know," Paige said, already dreading the conversation she would have to have with Coach Yarbrough.

"I'm assuming you looked into some flights?" Nick asked, knowing his daughter as well as he did.

"There's a red eye tomorrow that I can take," Paige told him. "Southwest Airlines, Flight 521. It'll give me time to pack and ship my extra boxes tomorrow."

"521, you said?" Nick asked. Paige could tell he was writing the information down so he could buy her ticket as soon as they hung up.

"Yeah," Paige assured him. "Thanks, Dad."

"You know what I was thinking about today while your grandma was in surgery?" he asked her. "Do you remember that time you fell out of your bed at camp?"

Paige smiled so widely she thought her face might break apart.

"Vividly," Paige chuckled. "I'm sorry if I scared you that night. I'm sure that raising Tuck and I was no easy job. We're both pretty dramatic."

Nick laughed lightly, deep in thought. "Having children complicates your life with love," he told his daughter. "I'll email you that flight confirmation in a few minutes, honey."

"Bye Dad, love you."

"Love you, too."

Paige felt relief wash over her, and then immediately began to second-guess her decision to leave Stanford. What if Tuck was right, Paige wondered, and she was ruining her life by volunteering to become her grandma's caregiver? She'd never done anything like it before. Still, in the back of her mind, Paige felt sure that she would regret it more if she didn't do everything she could to keep Grandma Hazel out of a nursing home. That thought calmed her greatly as she opened up her computer to wait for her Dad's email.

When she opened up her gmail account, there was nothing from her dad, yet, but Paige did have an email from Emily, which she opened curiously, and began to read.

_Dear Paige,_

_The night we first met, you told me that maybe you would read some of my poetry someday. I told you that I thought you would, someday. Well, here we are. Someday is today. _

_If I knew what was happening with you I might have been able to send you something to fit your mood, but that's alright. This is something I've been working on for couple weeks. Please call me soon. _

_Yours, Em_

Paige scrolled down so that the entire poem was framed in her screen and read Emily's poem very slowly and carefully, trying to glean every bit of comfort from it that she could.

_Cutaneous _

_I do not believe in love  
__ at first sight._

_I believe in albino peacocks  
__and watching_

_a person's face drain of all color in fear,  
__not of death,_

_but life. I believe in too much,  
__in regret, in missing._

_I do not believe in chemistry, in the well  
__stacked and numbered blocks._

_I believe in melanin, of its absence  
__in the iris that allows one to see_

_the blood behind the eye.  
__I believe in the red gaze and the slow_

_smoldering of bodies that do not  
__realize their wants. I believe in the apple,_

_fallen and rotting and in the avalanche of harvest.  
__I believe in gravity, not because I have fallen,_

_but because I believe in her  
__pull, and understand my whiteness,_

_my craters, the man living inside of me.  
__I believe in witch doctors,_

_and believe that they believe  
__that the bodies of albinos hold healing_

_powers. I believe in poachers  
__and what they sell_

_for those potions. I believe in  
__skin that is slowly leaving us,_

_the epidermis shedding  
__microscopic flakes every second, and could we_

_see, if our blood-hugged pupils could somehow  
__magnify everything, making love might be a blinding_

_snowstorm swirling around two bodies, terrified  
__embankments of union entombing them both._

_I believe in lovers' hands dislodging  
natural disasters from each other's sides._


	32. Chapter 32: Re-moving Day

Paige had slunk out of Stanford like a dog with its tail between its legs. She couldn't remember ever feeling so torn about a decision concerning the direction of her life. Unlike most of the kids in her high school, Paige had only applied to three colleges and, when she left for Stanford, she'd been sure about what she wanted to do with her life. She was going to swim professionally for as long as possible and then try her hand at coaching. She had never been plagued with the uncertainties that usually accompany the transition from high school to college and adulthood. Now everything was a mess, or appeared to be so. In the past year, her entire being had been stirred into such a frenzy she would not have believed it if someone had told her this was what was waiting for her five years ago. It reminded her of a Jackson Pollock painting she had once seen at a museum. Everything seemed simple, almost childish, from far away, but the closer she got to the thing, the more intricate and layered and complicated it revealed itself to be.

Paige had loved Emily's poem. She was in awe of the beauty that Emily seemed to be able to spin from thin air. But Paige was wrecked with shame over leaving Stanford. She was embarrassed and to be quite honest, in the two days after receiving Emily's email, she was incredibly busy. Paige knew she was avoiding Emily, but she felt unable to stop or start herself into action either way.

Paige had been vague with everyone, save her swimming coach, who she'd felt she owed slightly more of an explanation. Coach Yarbrough had been extremely disappointed in Paige's decision to leave the school and the team and she didn't hide that disappointment from Paige. She had told Paige, point blank, that she was wasting her potential and that she was sure that Paige could have made it to the Olympics if she had put her mind to it. Paige was sure of only one thing as she left the coach's office that morning: the conversation they'd just had would haunt her for years, if not decades.

"I'm leaving school due to a family emergency." That was all she told Carly as she'd stuffed clothes and bathroom items into her rolling suitcase and giant duffel bag. In a fit of loyalty Paige didn't know she was capable of, Carly had offered to drive Paige to the airport. When Paige refused, Carly had grabbed her into a stiff and unexpected hug.

"You're a great swimmer, Paige," Carly had told her. "Keep in touch, okay?"

Paige could only nod perfunctorily and say, "Yeah, I will," as she hoisted the strap of her bag over her head and situated it on her shoulder. "Take care," Paige had said, her eyebrows creased almost painfully, her whole face twisted with some emotion she refused to examine, and then she'd left the room.

As it was about 10:30 pm, on her way to the airport Paige had dropped her keys off with one of the security guards stationed at Stanford's housing office. The interior of the building was barely lit by a few dim lamps as the portly, middle-aged man opened the door and led her down a hallway and into an office that seemed to be made entirely out of keys, hooks and labels lining all four of the walls. The place had a very eerie feel to it at night.

"You want this keychain back?" he's asked after having Paige fill out the necessary form listing her name, building, and dorm number and taking the two keys she'd handed to him.

"Oh," Paige had nearly forgotten it in her haste to leave. "Yeah, I do…"

He glanced at it as he handed it back to Paige. "Vallance? Never heard of it," he'd remarked.

"It's kind of small," Paige had said dismissively, taking the purple and gold plastic crest back and stuffing it into her pocket without looking at it as she left.

* * *

Nick had picked Paige up from the airport and, despite her lack of sleep, the two had spent most of the day at Grandma Hazel's house, rearranging furniture and getting the house in order for Hazel's eventual return. Paige had been surprised to hear that she would be moving into her grandparent's large room in the upstairs portion of the house.

"Honey," Nick had told her with a sad look, "your grandmother's not going to be able to climb these stairs anymore."

"It just doesn't feel right," Paige had confessed as she and her father had used a few cardboard boxes to move Hazel's photographs, jewelry, books, and various knickknacks into the downstairs bedroom Paige and Tuck had always stayed in.

"I know, but I talked to Mom this morning and honestly, Paige, she's just so thankful to be able to stay at home after she gets discharged from the hospital. She cried when I told her what you offered to do. Your grandma wants you to be comfortable here, too. Once we get your grandfather's old bed out of the room, it'll be almost like you have your own apartment up there."

Paige knew, from what her father had told her and the pictures that she'd seen, that Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Frank's house was just a one-story ranch style when they'd bought it nearly 50 years ago. After having three sons, however, they'd realized they were going to need more room, so they had added on a master bedroom with its own bathroom above the connected garage. It had seemed like an enormous space when Paige was a kid, but in truth, it was just a little larger than a two-car garage. For reasons Paige had never questioned until that day, her grandparents had slept in separate queen-sized beds for as long as she could remember. After Frank had died, Hazel had left his bed in the room even though it took up so much space. Paige assumed that it was as an extra bed in case of guests, though, she wondered as she and her father carried out the old mattress if it was because Hazel just couldn't bear to get rid of it. As Paige and Nick worked in the upstairs bedroom to dismantle Frank's old bed frame, Paige's curiosity got the better of her.

"Did Grandpa and Grandma always sleep in separate beds? Like, when you were a kid?" she asked her father.

"Oh heavens, no! They didn't start sleeping in separate beds until Dad had retired," Nick said, always eager to tell his daughter about family history, no matter how mundane it was. "Before this bedroom was built, your grandparents' room was what's now the den. They just had the one bed in there. Remember what I told you? The breakfast room was a bedroom, too. So there were the three bedrooms in the corner down there. When we remodeled, we opened up that wall between the kitchen and bedroom to make the breakfast room. We used to have a little kitchen table squeezed in there where the dishwasher is now."

"So why did they start sleeping apart?" Paige had asked, trying to imagine five people living in the close quarters her father had just explained.

"Retirement is supposed to be relaxing. Well, for most people I think it is. But not for Dad," Nick had said, chuckling a little as he loosened a stubborn bolt on the old bed frame with the wrench he was holding, then wiping his brow. "Let's take a break for a few minutes, honey," he'd added, sitting down on the floor and putting the wrench down.

"Grandpa didn't like retirement?" Paige had asked, joining her father on the floor.

"Oh, I think he liked some aspects of it," Nick had told her. "He loved to come to your school plays and functions. He loved being able to take care of you and Tuck and spend so much time with you. But, for 40 years he was a mail carrier. He spent five days a week walking around for eight hours a day. Do you remember how skinny he was?" Paige nodded laughing. "Well, after he retired, he was just so restless. He hardly knew what to do with himself. That was when he took up gardening, and that helped a little, I think, but he never slept well after that. And Mom never would have gotten any sleep either if they hadn't moved into separate beds. From what she's told me, he was up few couple hours, pacing the room, trying to get some of that energy out. You know how much your grandparents loved each other. It wasn't because they were having problems or anything like that. The same love, the same relationship, it can look very different over the years. I learned a lot from my parents about how to roll with the punches that life throws at you. How to keep things in perspective."

As Paige had listened to her father, she couldn't help but think of Emily, and imagine what it might be like to be with her for decades; what it would be like to tell their children and grandchildren the story of their love. Paige knew they were nowhere near that kind of commitment yet, but the images had danced at the corners of her mind nonetheless.

"I'm dating someone," Paige had said, spurred on by her thoughts, but surprising herself with the confession just as much as her father.

"Are you really?" Nick had said, a smile crinkling the corners of his blue eyes. "Honey, that's wonderful. Why didn't you tell us?"

"Well," Paige had said, picking up the wrench and fiddling with it nervously, "Um…it's a…it's a girl?" Paige wasn't sure why it had come out as a question.

"Oh," Nick had said, glancing to the floor, a faraway look in his eyes. He sat quietly for a minute or so, Paige watching him closely as a smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth and he chuckled lightly. "Well, that explains a lot. I thought your teenage years were a little too easy. You never had any boyfriends around for me to intimidate."

"Dad!" Paige had yelled at his unexpectedly light-hearted response.

"I hope, for your sake," he'd added with a mischievous gleam in his eye, "that you've already told your brother. We don't need anymore head injuries in this family. Maybe you should put that wrench down..."

Paige had stared at her father, open-mouthed as he'd laughed at her expression. Paige had been stunned. Not only had her father reacted positively to the news of having another non-heterosexual child, but he was actually teasing her about it. As they had continued working to remove the extraneous furniture out of the house to make it more wheelchair friendly and install ramps in the garage and on the porch, Paige had told Nick about Emily and how she had been struggling to figure out who she was and what she was going to do with her life lately. Paige had been more honest with her father than she had been in her entire life. It had been the sort of conversation Paige couldn't even imagine herself even a year before.

Before leaving for the night, Nick had given Paige the keys to her grandmother's Buick and they'd arranged to meet at the hospital the next morning at 9. He'd even kissed her on the forehead and pulled her into a tight hug before he left. "I love you, honey," Nick had said. "Call if you need anything."

* * *

Now Paige was standing in her "new," half empty bedroom, alone, now that she thought about it, for the first time in her grandparent's house. That unsettled feeling was coming to rest in her chest again.

She walked around the room once, trailing her fingers along the yellow spines of the old National Geographic magazines that took up an entire bookcase, looking at her reflection in the speckled mirror of the wooden vanity Hazel had kept her makeup on for years, taking in the faded area rug that sat in the middle of the wood floor. Then she went into the empty closet, the contents of which she had moved to the downstairs bedroom, while her father had dismantled one of the two thick, wooden twin beds and moved it to the basement with Grandpa Frank's old bed frame and mattress. Paige pulled the cord for the light that was dangling in the middle of the closet and then drug her suitcase and duffel bag in. She just left them there under the light and went back out into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, running her hand over the scratchy acrylic bedspread.

"I really need to buy some new bedding if I'm going to sleep up here," she said out loud. "I can't sleep on this."

She knew every inch of this house so well, yet she always seemed to notice some strange object or quality about something she'd never noticed before every time she was there. Tonight, she noticed how truly outdated and itchy this bedding was. Paige felt so out of place in this house, where the flatware and most of the decks of cards were older than she was. Back at Stanford, she hadn't thought how weird it would feel to actually live in her grandparent's house. There was so much history already crammed into every inch of this place. _Where do I even fit into all of this? _Paige wondered.

A few moments later, Paige made a decision. She went into the closet and put on the first baggy t-shirt she ran across along with a pair of boxer shorts, grabbed her phone charger, phone, and toothbrush, turned out all the lights and headed downstairs.

She brushed her teeth quickly and then went into the small bedroom she and Tuck had slept in their entire lives whenever they stayed here. She was lucky that her father had taken apart the twin bed that was closest to the door because that was Tuck's bed. She climbed underneath the familiar blanket in the bed that was still sitting against the far wall, her bed, and pulled back the curtain on the window to look into the neighbor's side yard, the way she had done countless times before, and felt the slight, chilly draft seeping in through the edges of the window. A few moments later, she finally reached for her phone to call Emily.


	33. Chapter 33: A Map of Myself

Emily was a mess. It was now Tuesday and she still hadn't heard from Paige. Tuck, after he had calmed down and had heard from his dad, had told all the girls what had happened with Grandma Hazel. However, Tuck refused, point blank, to tell Emily why he was so angry with Paige.

The radio silence from Paige had driven Emily through a wide range of emotions, but by Tuesday night, she'd settled into a low valley of defeat. When she got back from the scene shop, by herself, she had felt the strange urge to lie down on the dining room table and decided it was best not to fight it. She climbed on top of the dark wood table and moved on to her back, spreading her arms and legs out to each of the corners and watched the ceiling fan spin slowly on its lowest setting, just slightly stirring the hair around her face.

About half an hour later, Charlie came home, with her headphones in, walked quickly past Emily on the table and into the kitchen. Emily thought Charlie hadn't even noticed her, but a minute or two later, she felt Charlie standing in the doorway between the rooms and glanced over to see her slowly eating a Poptart and observing her friend.

"You look like a dead starfish," Charlie mused.

"Starfish look the same. Dead or alive," Emily said, not moving.

"I kind of wanted to talk to you about something," Charlie said slowly. "Well, I guess it's more like asking you something. But you seem kind of indisposed."

"I'm fine," Emily told her in an even voice. "This just seemed like the right place."

"For a thoughtful repose on why Paige won't talk to you?" Charlie threw out.

"Exactly," Emily said, thankful that it was Charlie and not Jo or Eden who had found her like this, as they would have forced her to share her feelings and gorge on ice cream or do something else therapeutic. "So…shoot. What's your question?"

"I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be uncomfortable with me asking Eden out," Charlie said flippantly.

Emily wasn't exactly caught off guard by this question as she had always felt there was something different about Charlie and Eden's friendship, but she felt that Charlie's question deserved her full attention, so she sat up and looked over at Charlie, who was still munching on her Poptart, cool as a cucumber.

"Why would that make me uncomfortable?" Emily asked.

"Well, we all live together," Charlie said, her cocky grin splitting across her face. "If she says yes, we'll be having really loud sex, at all hours of the day. You KNOW Edie's gotta be a screamer."

"Oh totally," Emily agreed with Charlie's assumption. She was unsure why Charlie seemed to be acting like the whole thing was no big deal, but decided to play along until she figured it out. "How about we make a deal…I won't comment on the deafening sex you're sure to be having and you don't make any more snarky comments when you can hear my vibrator."

Charlie stroked her chin thoughtfully. "That seems fair," Charlie said nodding, "I'll just have to avoid being in the kitchen around 11 pm most nights."

"Charlotte this is exactly what I'm talking about!" Emily said, getting off the table. "No more shit like that."

"Honestly, Em, I think you get off more than I do," Charlie said smirking at her and then cowering slightly under Emily's angry stare. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. In all seriousness, though, if this….happens…it could change the dynamic of our group. You know. It's been the four of us, as friends, for a while. I just wanted to keep you and Jo in the loop. Full disclosure."

"Thank you," Emily said genuinely, smiling at Charlie. "I doubt it'll change much, though. I'm not worried." Emily walked past her into the kitchen and started pushing around the contents on her shelf, trying to find something she wanted to eat.

"Em?" Charlie said behind her, and Emily was caught off guard momentarily by the rare vulnerability she heard in Charlie's voice. She turned around and was met with such a look of worry on Charlie's face that she immediately moved forward and put her hands on Charlie's arms.

"Charlie, what's wrong?"

"What if she says 'no?'" Charlie said, chewing the skin on her bottom lip and squeezing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Emily recognized both gestures as things Charlie usually only did when Eden was opening a new show and Charlie was nervously waiting in the audience. Emily couldn't help but smile and shake her head.

"Charlotte Cole, anyone with eyes can see that Eden Renmark is in love with you," Emily told her, but Charlie still looked nearly sick with worry. "Look, in about 5 minutes, Eden is going to get home, and she's going to come in here and take that other Poptart out of her hand and help herself to it and look at you like you're the only person in the room. Because you are for her. Even Paige asked me if you two were together when she was here."

"Really?" Charlie seemed to value Paige's opinion as an outsider and more objective source. "What did you tell her?"

"I told her the truth," Emily said planting a kiss on Charlie's forehead, "that you two are in love."

Charlie beamed.

* * *

It was 9:30. Charlie and Eden were upstairs talking and Emily was laying flat on her back on top of the dining room table again. This time, however, she was on a very large piece of paper and Jo was tracing her entire body with a thick, black Sharpie.

"What's the point of this?" Emily asked.

"I read about this on the internet," Jo told her. "I really think you're going to like it. It's very artsy-fartsy, poet-y…whatever. You're going to love it. It's called Map of Myself. After I'm done tracing you, you draw on the inside like it's a map. Put a river where your spine is, or make your tits mountains…I don't know! Whatever you want. It's supposed to give a person a better understanding of…how they understand themselves? I think that's what the website said. Self discovery stuff."

Emily cocked one eyebrow and looked at Jo as she finished tracing her body.

"You're right," she conceded. "I do like that, but I think I did this project in kindergarten once."

"I told you," Jo said giving her a stern look and ignoring Emily's last comment. "You'll probably write like 20 poems while we work on these things. Now get up and do me."

Emily hopped off the table and grabbed another one of the giant sheets of paper Jo had brought home from the art department.

Just as Jo was lying down, though, Emily's phone rang. Jo shot up off the table, looking almost as anxious as Emily, who was pulling her phone out of her pocket.

"Is it her?" Jo said.

Emily nodded, seeing Paige's name appear on her screen. She glanced over at Jo.

"Well answer it!" Jo shouted at her.

"Okay! Shut up!" Emily said, taking a deep breath and turning her back to Jo as she walked into the kitchen. "Hello?" she said in a much cooler and composed voice.

"Hey…Em," Paige's voice sounded both guilty and nervous on the other end of the phone.

"Paige…" Emily was so relieved just to hear the other girl's voice that any anger she had still been feeling over Paige's three-day silence ebbed away immediately. "What happened? I was so worried about you."

"Tuck didn't tell you?" Paige asked, genuinely surprised and also relieved that Emily didn't sound ticked off at her. She thought for sure Tuck would've spoken to Emily about everything by now.

"He told me about your grandma, Paige. I'm so sorry," Emily said, noticing that she was sitting on the kitchen counter now, though she couldn't remember how she got there. "But he said that she's alright, that she made it through her surgery just fine and that with some rehab and time she'll even be able to walk again. But…well, he made it seem like something else happened, or…I don't know. He's just so mad at you, Paige. And if everything is okay, or is going to be okay, well…why wouldn't you have called me sooner?"

"Right," Paige said, taking in this new information. "Um, well, my parents, they wanted to put my grandma into a nursing home because she's not going to be able to take care of herself anymore. I mean, once she can walk again, she'll be able to do most things, but she's just going to need more help with cooking and cleaning and things like that. "

"Okay," Emily said to let Paige know she was still listening.

"I just…I couldn't let that happen."

"What'd you mean?" Emily said, unsure where Paige was going with this.

"There's stuff I haven't told you, Em," Paige said, realizing that she needed to explain her unhappiness at Stanford before she revealed she was no longer a student there.

"So tell me," Emily said, her heart racing, unsure what Paige could be talking about.

"I hated it at Stanford. I was so lonely, so miserable," Paige said, letting the weight of all her emotions spill out of her. "I don't know what I was thinking. I wanted to be brave and independent and go live in California all by myself, but…there was a lot I didn't take into account…like how much I suck at making friends. And how much I was going to miss my family. How much I would miss Philadelphia and the seasons changing and how familiar everything is. And then…then I went to Vallanace and I met you and saw…everything that I could have had. God, I would kill to have friends who love me the way yours do Em. And it all just piled up. When I got back here after my last visit, everything just felt a thousand times worse."

"Oh, Paige," Emily muttered, her heart breaking for the other girl.

"So, when I heard about Grandma Hazel, and what happened, and that they wanted to put her in a nursing home, well…I just couldn't bear the thought of her being in one of those places. Have you ever been in a nursing home, Emily?" Paige asked and Emily nodded, not really thinking that Paige couldn't see her, though it didn't seem to matter, because Paige just kept talking. "My grandma, she practically raised Tuck and I. She's been there for me through everything. She's always taken care of me. Always. In ways I can't even explain. So…I told my Dad I wanted to move home and take care of her, so she could stay in her house. I, uh…I dropped out of Stanford. I left late last night. I'm back in Philly now."

"You did what?" Emily asked, flabbergasted.

"I know it sounds bad," Paige began, "but I'm transferring to the community college here and I'm going to start taking classes again in January when the new semester starts. So I can just do school part time until Grandma is back on her feet…and everything…everything is going to be fine," Paige said, trying convince herself as much as Emily.

"But, you're future, Paige…your swimming…what are you going to do?" Emily said, despondently.

"I…I don't know yet. I'm still trying to figure that out," Paige told her. "I'm in a transitionary period."

"Transitionary isn't even a word," Emily replied.

"Well, I'm coining it then," Paige said, trying to get Emily to laugh. "Em, I know how this all sounds, but.."

"It sounds like you just gave up," Emily said, before she could filter herself. "God, Paige, I don't know. I think you might end up regretting this."

"Why does every one keep saying that?!" Paige yelled. "God! I have been _so_ stupid. I even told my dad about you tonight. You know what? Just forget it, Emily. I thought you would be the one person who would be on my side, who would understand why I did this." All the doubts and fears that had been coursing through Paige for the past three days finally boiled over. "You think I haven't thought of all that? That maybe I just fucked everything up for myself? I didn't make this decision lightly, okay?"

"You sure made it quickly," Emily retorted, her natural response to go on the defensive when anyone yelled at her. But she was immediately kicking herself for the statement. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I know this was probably a hard decision for you."

"Probably?!" Paige was completely incensed now. "You don't just abandon the people you love! There are more important things than school and fucking swimming, Emily! People should be taken care of, not just shoved in some shitty nursing home when they get old!"

"Paige, that's not what I was saying! I'm just worried for you," Emily tried to explain. "I want you to be happy!"

"Well, you know what would make me really happy?" Paige was going full throttle now. She could feel it, she knew she was heading toward saying something she would regret, but she couldn't stop herself. Paige was so tired. She had flown clear across the country just the night before. She was anxiety ridden and worried sick over what had indeed been a enormous, hasty decision. And now she felt like all she had done in the past few days was defend herself for making what she had believed was an extremely brave decision. "What would make me happy would be for you to just leave me alone! Alright? Let's just forget the whole thing, Emily. You're clearly not the person I thought you were."

"Paige, come on," Emily was panicking now. Things had gone from bad to worse more quickly than Emily had thought possible. "You're just…you're misunderstanding me. Please don't say that. Paige, we've barely started…you can't…"

"Bye, Emily."

"Paige! Wait!" Emily screamed. But Paige had already hung up. The other side of the line was completely silent. Tears were sliding down Emily's cheeks as she stared at the screen of her phone that flashed a quick CALL ENDED before it went dark in her palm. "Damn it! God damn it!"

* * *

"Fuck! Why am I so fucking stupid?!" Paige yelled into the empty, dark house, already wishing she could take back everything she'd just said to Emily, but feeling that familiar, self-preserving pride beginning to flow into her veins as well like spreading poison.


	34. Chapter 34: Welcome to Tribberville

To her surprise, when Paige woke up, she had five text messages from Emily.

The first said, "I'm not going to let you push me away."

The next said, "I'm sorry. I should have been more supportive. I was just shocked when you said you left Stanford."

After that was, "You're the girl of my dreams. I can't just leave you alone."

The fourth text said, "I'm not afraid to play dirty to get you to forgive me."

The last text was a picture of Emily's boobs and it immediately made Paige flush, heat coursing through her body, and feel more than willing to forget last night's conversation. But then she noticed something. She could see both of Emily's hands, lifting up her shirt in the picture. Emily definitely hadn't taken this picture herself. Paige shook her head knowingly. She laughed dryly as she tried to imagine the scene that must have taken place while the girls worked together to help Emily get the perfect boob shot. Paige just had no frame of reference for friendships like that.

"Fuckin' Charlie," Paige murmured, assuming she was the most instrumental in taking the photo.

There was also another text that said, "Way to go moron." But that was from Tuck. Clearly, his attitude toward Paige had not yet softened. Paige couldn't help but feel like she always got the most attention when she wanted it the least.

As she got up and got ready for the day – showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast—Paige kept pulling her phone out and staring longingly at Emily's tits, biting her lip and tilting her head as she lost herself in them. She felt like they were putting her in a trance. It was so hard to stay mad at someone whose nipples had been in her mouth less than a month ago. Finally, just before she left the house, Paige responded to Emily's text.

"I can't believe you let Charlie take a topless picture of you," Paige replied, deciding not to show just how weakened her resolve had become over one picture of Emily's breasts. After pressing send, Paige hopped in her grandma's old, grey Buick Town and Country and headed to the hospital.

It only took her about 15 minutes to drive to Philadelphia Regional Medical Center. Paige was a little early, so she pulled her phone out, intending to play Tetris for a few minutes, but she saw that Emily had already replied. Paige wasn't expecting her to be awake yet. She opened the message and quickly read the text.

"Eden, actually. Jo was in charge of lighting. Charlie was making drinks."

"Why were you drinking on a Tuesday night?" Paige typed out. Her attention was caught by this detail, because, while Emily and her friends definitely did their share of drinking, as far as Paige knew, they kept it relegated to the weekends. Despite her lingering anger at the girl, Paige couldn't help but feel worried about Emily.

"Why you do think?" Emily's response read.

Paige eyes narrowed at the messed up syntax. It wasn't like Emily. Paige didn't have time to do this over text, though. As much as she didn't want to, she pressed call next to Emily's name in her contact list and put the phone up to her ear.

"Paigey," Emily said, slurring the girl's name slightly as she answered. "I knew that tit pic would get you."

"Are you still drunk?" Paige asked incredulously.

"Maybe just a little bit," Emily admitted. "Anyway, why do you care?"

"Emily, why did you start drinking in the first place? It's the middle of the week."

"Well, after you hung up on me, I was like yelling and crying, and so Charlie made like five gallons of sangria to cheer me up. She's like…Mary Poppins…with alcohol. I love Charlie," Emily explained all of this in a very dreamy voice.

"Okay," Paige was losing her patience quickly. She felt bad that she'd upset Emily so much, but Emily had upset her, too. "You're not allowed to drink anymore. For at least 24 hours. Are the other girls still with you?"

"No. They went to bed."

"What have you been doing drinking by yourself?" Paige asked.

"I've been drawing you a map to my vagina in case you ever want to see me again. And for your information," Emily added angrily, as if only just realizing what Paige had said a minute ago, "you don't get to tell me what to do. I'll drink all day if I want to. You can't just tell me to leave you alone and break things off between us and then tell me what to do like 4 hours later."

While Emily's internal clock was a little off in this estimation, her sentiment held true. Paige was sending mixed messages. She swallowed down her pride, her mouth pressed into a thin line and said, "Em, I have a lot to worry about right now. I can't be worrying about you, too. Just…please stop drinking."

"Whatever, Paige. I gotta get back to my map."

"Don't you have class, Em?"

"You know, for someone who wants nothing to do with me, you sure do know my schedule," Emily scoffed.

Paige glanced at the time. It was now 8:50. She needed to go into the enormous hospital so she could have enough time to find the wing Grandma Hazel was staying in.

"I gotta go," she muttered, sure that this conversation with Emily wasn't going to become productive any time soon.

"Of course you do," Emily replied. "And I gotta get back to this sangria. Bye."

Paige climbed out of the car, locked it, and then pressed call on another one of the contacts on her phone and put it back to her ear as she walked through the parking lot. It rang three times before a sleepy voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Jo, hey, it's Paige," she said. "I'm so sorry to wake you up, but I just talked to Emily. She's still drunk. And still drinking. She said she was drawing some kind of map to her vagina. I don't know. She sounded pretty far gone."

"Oh god," Jo sighed deeply, knowing immediately what Emily had been talking about, "Okay, I'll go take care of her. Thanks for calling, Paige…hey, are you all right? I'm so sorry about your grandma."

"Oh," Paige was caught off guard by Jo's concern for her. "Um…no, not really."

"Well, I was serious in that text. I'm always available if you ever want to talk," Jo told her.

"I…thanks," Paige stuttered out. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm at the hospital right now, though, so I gotta go."

"Alright, bye Paige."

* * *

Jo rubbed her eyes for a moment before pulling herself out of bed and heading down to the basement where she was sure she would find Emily working on her Map of Myself. Though, from what Paige had just told her, it sounded like it had taken an interesting turn.

Jo knocked on the basement door and heard an indistinct "YO" from Emily somewhere within before she opened the door and went down. It was an interesting scene that Jo was met with. Emily, indeed, had her Map rolled out in front of her on the floor and she was wearing Paige's purple Vallance sweatshirt with just a pair of bright pink boy shorts on her bottom half. She had the large pot of sangria sitting next to her on the floor and she was drinking some of it out of a ladle, slurping loudly. As Jo approached her, she looked more closely at the body map Emily had apparently been working on for the past few hours.

"Emily…" Jo couldn't help but laugh. "What are you even doing?"

Emily had covered nearly the entire outline of her body with different patterned and colored arrows, all pointed, very tactfully, at the crotch on the outline of herself. And right there, on the vagina itself, she had written in large, block letters,

"WELCOME TO TRIBBERVILLE"

"Oh my god," Jo said through her laughter. "We have to put that on your door."

"Josephine!" Emily exclaimed, looking up at Jo for the first time since she'd come down the stairs. "How very nice of you to rejoin me. Grab a ladle! Help yourself!"

"You are such an entertaining drunk, but I think it's time for you to sober up now, Em," Jo told her gently.

"Ugh," Emily grumbled. "That gorgeous bitch called you, didn't she?"

"Yeah, she did," Jo admitted, grabbing the pot off the floor and heading upstairs with it. "Like I told you last night, I really don't think she meant what she said. She obviously cares about you if she called me to make sure you stopped drinking."

"God," Emily said, drawing out the vowel of the word and falling backwards onto the floor. "I'm so horny!"

"You're on your own there, champ," Jo said from the top of the stairs as she closed the door behind her.

"Well," Emily reasoned out loud, "it's not like I can go to class like this."

Emily grabbed her phone and crawled over to her bed, chuckling at the brazen idea that had just formed in her mind. She situated her back and shoulders on her pillows and let her legs fall open. Then she opened the camera on her phone and switched it to video and started recording as she slipped her hand into her underwear and started playing with her clit. She moaned loudly, playing it up more than she normally would when she was by herself.

"Oh fuck," she moaned. "Paige… just thinking about you gets me wet."

* * *

Paige spent most of the morning just sitting and talking with her parents and Grandma Hazel. When Paige had first entered the room, her grandmother had given her an enormous smile, though there were tears in her eyes, and opened her arms for Paige. The two had sat together for a long few minutes just holding each other and crying quietly.

"There, now," Hazel had said finally, holding Paige's face in her hands and wiping the tears off. "That's enough of that. We'll take care of each other now, dearheart."

Paige had been so relieved to see that Hazel was still her lively, feisty self, even laid up in the hospital with a broken leg. She had spoken with one of the nurses for a long time about the rehabilitation time frame they were looking at and exactly how often Paige would need to bring Hazel in for check-ups. The nurse had given Paige the names and numbers of several cab companies and car services from which she could request vans with wheelchair ramps. Then she showed Paige how she would need to wrap Hazel's cast for her shower and how to properly and safely help Hazel support her weight on her one good leg to transfer from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to the bathroom. By the time she and her parents left, just after lunch, Paige's head was spinning with all the new information, with things she hadn't even considered when she volunteered to be her grandmother's caregiver.

"So how was the first night in the upstairs bedroom?" Paige's mom asked her as they left the hospital.

"I couldn't do it," Paige said shrugging. "I slept downstairs. I think I just need to buy my own bedding and maybe a table or chair or something. Just so it doesn't feel like I'm stealing Grandma's room _quite _as much."

Anne glanced at Nick and he nodded at her, seeming to know what she was thinking. She was smiling when she turned back to Paige.

"You're absolutely right," she said to her daughter. "Let's go shopping."

Nick opted out of the shopping trip, telling them he had some work to do at the church and that he needed to work on his sermon. So Paige and Anne took the Buick and spent the afternoon at Target picking out a few things to make the room feel more like Paige's own. With her mother helping her redecorate the bedroom, it felt less like she was vandalizing a memorial and more like a fun project. Her mother's approval always had that effect on Paige.

When they were back at the house, putting the new sheets and blanket on the bed, Anne, with her eyes still trained on the task at hand, said, "So. Tell me about Emily."

Paige lost her grip on the fitted sheet corner she was holding and it sprang back to the center of the mattress as she laughed nervously.

"Sometimes I forget how much you and Dad talk," Paige said sheepishly.

"We have been known to," Anne said, looking at her daughter, with an expression of interest.

"Emily…she's like the prettiest girl in the world," Paige began, blushing. "She goes to Vallance, but Dad probably already told you that. Um…she's a poet. Her Dad's in the Army. She's an only child. I don't know. She has this way of making things beautiful with the way she talks about them. She builds these family units around her wherever she goes. "

Anne was smiling widely when Paige chanced a look at her mother's face.

"She sounds wonderful," Anne said genuinely.

"Yeah, she is," Paige said sadly. "But we got into this fight last night. I totally fuc—" Paige caught herself mid-word and looked up at her mom, who now had a stern, reproachful look on her face.

"You watch your language, young lady," Anne said.

"Yes ma'am. Sorry," Paige said quickly, her shoulders slumping. "Uh, I totally _messed _things up."

"Go on," her mother said.

"Well, I told her I left Stanford. And she, well, she has the same opinion about it that Tuck does. But she didn't present it in such a mean way. She said she was worried I was going to regret coming home to take care of Grandma."

"And how did that make you feel?" her mother asked patiently.

"Scared…attacked," Paige admitted. "Everybody thinks I've ruined my life—Tuck, Em, Coach Yarbrough. Mom, do you think this was a mistake?"

"I think it was a choice that not many people would have made. Especially someone your age. But no, I don't think it was a mistake, sweetheart. I know you pretty well. Less so since you left for college, but well enough to know that you would have regretted it if you had stayed at Stanford. I think you would've wished every day you had come home to help your grandma. It would've been an unlivable situation for you.

"Your brother…well, you are not Theodore. You may be twins, but you're such different people. He's angry with you because you made the wrong decision for _him. _He's just trying to protect you, in his way. Once he realizes, or remembers, rather, that you don't have the same needs and wants, he'll come around. It's been hard on both of you adjusting to living your lives separately. I'm sure he'll apologize soon.

"As for Emily, I don't have quite the same insight on her, of course, but it sounds like she was just trying to look out for you. You two are still getting to know each other. She probably just doesn't understand why you made this decision. But I can tell you that the more confident _you _are in your decision, the more confident she'll be that you made the _right _decision. When _you're_ at peace, everyone else will come around."

"Yeah," Paige said, flopping down on her new plum-colored bedspread. "You're right."

"I'm going to head home for the night," Anne said kissing her daughter. At the doorway, she turned around, though. "Paige, apologizing fixes most things."

* * *

"Em, are you alive?"

A gentle hand was rubbing circles on Emily's back, but it didn't distract her from the fact that her head felt like it was about to split open and let her miserable brain spill out everywhere. This was going to be one hell of a hangover. She groaned pathetically.

"Eden, what time is it?" Emily croaked.

"It's almost 3. I heard you made some poor choices after the rest of us went to bed last night," Eden's voice sounded scolding, but like she was holding off on really letting Emily have it until she saw just how hung over she was. Eden was stern, but not cruel.

Emily opened her eyes a millimeter and saw that her phone was clutched in her left hand. She stared at it curiously for moment and then—

"Oh no," she muttered, her eyes growing wider and wider as the memory of what she had done that morning slowly came back to her. "No no no no." Emily sat up as quickly as she dared with her spinning head and opened her phone. It was on her email already, which wasn't a good sign at all. She nervously tapped her sent messages. It showed she had sent Paige an email at 8:27 that morning. And the email had a video attachment.

"Oh my god, I actually sent it," she whispered, horrified. She dropped her phone onto the bed and covered her face with both of her hands. "Noooooooo."

Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

"How's the founder of Tribberville doing?" Charlie's voice came from nearby. "Other than hung over?"

"I think Emily made some more poor choices after Jo confiscated the sangria this morning." Eden had been watching Emily closely.

"Oooh. Whadja do Emilio?" Charlie chuckled.

Emily pulled her hands down just enough so that she could glance up at her friends who were perched on the edge of her bed.

"I may…"Emily began, "or may not…have taken a video. Of me. Masturbating. And emailed it to Paige."

"Emily Fields, you made a sex tape! Who are you, Kim Kardashian?!" Eden shouted, actually smacking Emily on the forehead.

"Ouch!" Emily said, falling back onto her pillow despondently.

"Are you serious?" Charlie asked, sounding like a kid on Christmas morning, and collapsing soon after in a fit of laughter.

"I didn't know we needed to get you a fucking babysitter!" Eden continued berating her friend. "First, you stay up all night drinking and then you made this video! You were on a roll this morning, Fields. What were you thinking?!"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time!" Emily shouted back, finding a little fight in her after all.

"It was a GREAT IDEA!" Charlie yelled wrapping her arms around Eden and yanking her back onto the bed with the other two.

"I swear to God, Charlotte…" Eden began, struggling to unpin her arms from her sides, but she didn't finish because at that moment they all heard the front door open and close above them.

Charlie let go immediately and took off up the stairs yelling, "JO! Jo! Emily made a sex tape and leaked it herself! WE'RE GONNA BE FAMOUS!"

A few minutes later, Charlie and Jo came down to the basement again.

"You didn't," was all Jo said, an exasperated look on her face.

"I did," Emily sighed.

"Well," Charlie said loudly from the foot of the bed, "no use crying over spilled jizz."

"Charlie!" Jo exclaimed.

Eden, however, picked up one of Emily's pillows off the bed and decked Charlie so hard in the head that she fell out of sight and onto the floor. Then Eden leaned over the end of the bed to glare at her.

"Why did I ever agree to go out with you?" Eden said, shaking her head.

"You're lucky I'm fond of your violent outbursts," Emily heard Charlie respond from the floor.


	35. Chapter 35: What Goes Around Cums Around

**I don't like to interrupt the story, but I did want to do a trigger warning here, though, I'm honestly not that familiar with them or their labels. There is talk of pretty rough, forceful sex in this chapter. It's not too graphic, but I didn't want to catch anyone off guard.**

**Also, a huge thank you to EVERYONE reading, follow, favoriting and those reviewing as well. Thanks for sticking with me through the sadder chapters. You're all wonderful and I'd love to hear from any of you.**

* * *

After her mother left, Paige changed into her pajamas and grabbed her laptop out of her suitcase. She hadn't even opened it in two days and figured she should at least check her email to see if she had any loose ends to tie up with Stanford, or if she' d heard back from the Office of the Registrar about getting her transcripts sent to CCP.

Paige opened her gmail and scrolled through a few things—the Redbox newsletter about new releases, something from Target, a coupon for Barnes and Noble. Then there was an email from Emily. Paige clicked on it. It was a video, but Emily hadn't provided any explanation of what it was. The only thing she'd written in the body of the email was, "A Very Happy Unbirthday to you."

"What the hell?" Paige muttered quietly as she clicked on the video and opened it, wondering if Emily had still been drunk when she sent this.

The video started playing and Paige watched as Emily's familiar brown-skinned body came up on the screen. She watched as Emily slipped a hand into her hot pink boy shorts and started touching herself.

"Oh my god," Paige muttered, smiling slightly and leaning closer to her screen, breathing heavily.

It was the sexiest thing Paige had ever seen. It was better than porn or any movie sex scene. Nothing could compare to this because Emily had made this _for _Paige and the entire time she was moaning Paige's name and saying the filthiest, dirtiest things Paige had ever heard. And the fact that Paige couldn't actually see Emily's hand or what she was doing made it, somehow, even sexier.

She was soaked within the first two minutes, but she didn't want to touch herself. Not yet anyway. Not when she could have the real thing. It got harder and harder to hold back though, as Emily's hips started to rock up against her hand, as she continued to mutter what she wanted Paige to do to her between moans and gasps. And then about 5 minutes in, Emily had pushed up the sweatshirt she was wearing. (_My sweatshirt, _Paige thought with relish) and began grabbing and pinching her tits and nipples for a few moments before returning her hand to her underwear. Paige slid her own hand under her shirt and mirrored Emily's motions, paying special attention to the metal barbell pierced through her left nipple, the way she usually did, the occasional "fuck" escaping her lips. At the end of the video, Paige got to suffer through the very unique torture of being able to hear Emily gasping and groaning through her orgasm but not being able to see if happening, on her face or anywhere else, because Emily had dropped phone as the wave of pleasure hit her. She had been drunk, after all.

* * *

It was nearly 10 pm. The girls were all in the living room working on homework. Well, Eden was stretched out with her legs in Charlie's lap, snoring slightly, with a copy of _A Streetcar Named Desire _on top of her face. Charlie was pretending to read a section of her history book about Second Wave Feminism, but was actually reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Jo was on the other side of the sectional, memorizing terms for her anatomy class. Emily was stretched out on the floor, writing a paper comparing the poetry of Catallus and Louis MacNeice, trying to pretend like she wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop in regards to her foray into adult filmmaking. It was hard to do, though, when Charlie wouldn't stop talking about it.

"Look," Charlie said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation instead of a 30 minute silence, "all I'm saying is it's either going to go REALLY WELL, or you'll never hear from her again."

"You're just so comforting, Charlie," Emily said, tapping her pen nervously against her poetry book. "Has anyone ever told her you that?"

"No," Charlie responded distractedly, ripping a corner off of the magazine. She had been throwing tiny balls of paper at Eden for the past 10 minutes, trying to get them down her shirt.

"You're also very good at picking up on sarcasm," Jo threw over casually at Charlie who rolled her eyes and hit Jo in the face with one of the paper balls.

"Everything is fine," Jo went on, scowling at Charlie. "I mean, it was stupid, but honestly, who gets offended when someone they're dating send them that kind of video? Paige is probably just busy and hasn't had a chance to call you yet."

"Yeah, I'll bet she's busy!" Charlie said, grinning widely.

"She might have found it insensitive," Emily reasoned, ignoring Charlie's last comment, "given what's going on in her life right now."

"Yeah, maybe," Jo told her truthfully. "But, I doubt it."

"Can we just talk about something else?" Emily pleaded.

"Sure…" Jo said, looking up from her flashcards. "I have two topics you can choose from: 1. It's you birthday in two weeks, so what do you want to do? Or 2. I think Liz has a crush on you, just FYI."

"What?" Emily said, sitting up quickly to look at Jo. "Liz who? There are a lot of people named Liz at this school."

"Theater Liz. Liz Donovan," Jo responded. "She stage managed _Eurydice_."

"Okay, and why do you think she has a crush on me?" Emily questioned.

"Well, I started helping her do props for _Cloud 9_ when I finished hanging all the lights last week. She just…asks about you a lot. Like, what your major is, and if you have a job on campus, and how long I've known you."

"If she's into girls, why isn't she hitting on you?" Emily asked. "You're available and cute. I'm a hot mess."

"Jo's a little too equestrian for her," Charlie chimed in. "If you know what I mean."

"Um, no…what the hell do you mean?" Emily deadpanned.

"Did you just call me a horse?" Jo asked, glaring at Charlie again.

"No!" Charlie said. "You're just…and I don't mean any offense here, Josephine…you're just kind of a down home gal," Charlie finished, spreading her hands in front of her, as if to say, _here it is._

"I'm from Wisconsin," Jo said defensively. "What's wrong with that?"

"You just," Charlie said, only digging herself in deeper. "you wear a lot of plaid."

"So do you!" Jo said pointing at the teal and gold plaid shirt Charlie currently had on.

"Yeah, but it's a different kind of plaid," Charlie retorted. "Mine is like Seattle-grunge plaid. Yours is more…rural."

"Whatever, Charlie," Jo said, crossing her arms over her chest. "How would you even know what type of girls Liz is into?"

"She was in that painting class I took," Charlie said, picking up the book she was pretending to read, and tossing aside the magazine. "We, uh…hung out a few times…and from our…._conversations_…I was able to gather a few things."

"Okay," Jo said with one eyebrow cocked. "Vague much?"

"Wait a minute," Emily said, a grin forming on her face, "was she the girl that you hooked up with in that storage closet?!"

"No!" Charlie said, glancing over at Eden's still snoozing form, then dropping her voice to a whisper and continuing. "It only happened like 3 times. It was no big deal."

"Why didn't you tell us it was her?" Jo whispered back, remembering how oddly resistant Charlie had been at the time to tell them who the girl had been even though she was more than generous with the rest of the details.

"She had a boyfriend at the time," Charlie shrugged. "It was a sticky situation. Anyway…if Paige jumps ship, you should go for it, Em. Liz is a lovely girl. Very flexible."

"Oh god," Emily said, scrunching up her face. "I'm sorry I asked."

"The whole point of that," Jo announced, "was just to say, if you're not interested," Jo looked at Emily as she spoke, "you should probably avoid Liz, because she seems pretty hell bent."

"Thanks," Emily told her. "I'll watch my back."

"So let's talk about birthday plans, then," Charlie said smiling. "Please say we can throw you a rave!"

"Um…" Emily pretended to consider it. "No."

"We have to do something big," Jo said. "It's your 21st."

Emily's phone chimed from the pocket of her sweatshirt, however, and brought the party planning to an abrupt halt. Frantically, she pulled it out and saw that it was a text from Paige. All it said, though, was "Are you busy?" Emily read it aloud to her friends.

"That's code for 'I'd like to have phone sex if you're available,'" Charlie told her point blank.

Emily looked over to Jo to see if she would confirm or deny this assessment.

"For once," Jo said, "I'm going to have to agree with Charlotte."

Emily typed a quick response, not wanting to get her hopes up, "No, I'm not," and headed down to the basement. It was only about 30 seconds later that Emily's phone started ringing. She was so nervous that her hands were shaking as she answered.

"Paige, I'm so sorry," Emily said in lieu of a greeting. "I don't know what I was thinking when I made that video this morning. I mean, I was drunk, not that it's an excuse—"

"Emily," Paige cut her off mid apology and Emily was caught off guard by the sheer need that was apparent in Paige's voice. Her name was followed by a deep sigh from Paige that was practically dripping with sex. "Talk to me..." Paige said breathily, "like you did in that video."

The request sent a jolt straight to Emily's center. Emily was almost sure, from the way her voice sounded, that Paige was touching herself already.

"Fuck, babe," Emily purred apologetically. "I don't remember what I said. Remind me?"

Paige laughed lightly. "You were more drunk than I thought this morning," she began. It didn't even occur to her to be embarrassed by this situation or to feel awkward about what she wanted. She was too turned on to think of anything else. "You said you wanted me to take you from behind with a strap-on. You told me you wanted to be spanked while I pounded your tight cunt."

This was all very, very true. Emily had fantasized about Paige fucking her senseless on her hands and knees many times before. But to hear it told to her in Paige's voice was more than enough to have Emily drenched in moments. But this was about Paige, what she needed right now, and Emily was happy to give it to her. Now that she had a direction, Emily needed no more prompting or help from Paige. Words were _her_ specialty, after all.

"Oh fuck, yes. I do. I want that so bad, for you to push me onto my hands and knees in front of you, or lean me over the arm of the couch, press my back down with one hand and pull my hair back with the other while you slide your cock into me. Slow at first. Excruciatingly slow, until you're flush against my ass, deep inside my wet pussy. Then I want you to spank me and make me beg for it. Play with my nipples, rough. I want you to pinch them and bite my shoulders. God. I want you to grope me and then grab me by the hips and just pound me, fuck me so hard I can't hold myself up anymore, until I'm screaming your name."

To say that Emily had a talent for dirty talk would be the understatement of the century. She was like Van Gogh and this conversation was her masterpiece. Paige was quickly coming undone from the scene Emily was paining on the inside of her closed eyes, the fingers of her left hand buried deep inside of her and the fingers of her right hand rubbing tight circles over her clit. She'd had enough foresight to put the phone on speaker. Paige was close, but she didn't want it to stop just yet.

"Keep going," Paige urged. "Tell me more. I…I'm getting close."

"If I were with you, Paige, I'd have my face buried between your thighs, licking slowly all over your pussy, running my tongue through your folds, sucking your clit, slipping inside you to fuck you with my tongue. God, when I tasted you, licked your cum off your fingers that day, it was the biggest tease of my life. I want to taste you straight from the source. I want to hold your hips down as you cum into my mouth, feel your walls clench around my tongue. I want to be your undoing, Paige McCullers."

Emily could hear how close Paige was, her breathing was labored and she was letting out delicious little grunts more and more frequently.

"Cum for me baby," Emily commanded. "Let me hear you."

And Paige did as she was told.

"Oh fuck!" Paige yelled, throwing her head back as every muscle in her body began to thrum before she let out a long moan as her orgasm crashed over her.


	36. Chapter 36: Reaching an Impasse

"Paige?"

Emily's voice seemed to be coming from some other planet. Paige was floating away up in space, riding the fumes of the orgasm rocket in the quiet serenity of the sky, and Emily's distant voice was the only thing still tying her to the earth.

"Just…wait," she mumbled.

"It's been like, 3 minutes already," Emily laughed. "That good, huh?"

"Mmmhmm," Paige breathed out, finally opening her eyes again. "I think I just really needed that."

"You do sound more relaxed than you have in weeks," Emily commented. "When was the last time you had an orgasm?"

"Um, let's see…." Paige was having a hard time remembering anything at this point. "A few days before Halloween, I think."

"Jeez. No wonder you were so on edge."

"Why? How often do you get yourself off?" Paige asked.

"Once a day, usually," Emily answered.

"Is that normal?" Paige suddenly felt like some kind of celibate nun next to Emily.

"Well, it is for me," Emily replied. "But it's not like there's some frequency or range you have to be in to be normal. I do think you might be a little less on edge if you rubbed one out a few times a week, though."

"I'll take that into consideration now that I have my own room," Paige told her.

"I'd be happy to help anytime you need some inspiration," Emily said seductively.

"Well now that I have this video, I don't really need you anymore, do I?"

"Very funny, McCullers."

"I'll delete it. If you want me to," Paige told Emily honestly.

"No. Keep it," Emily said. "I might be in class sometimes when you're in the mood. Wouldn't want to deprive you."

Paige laughed a little and a comfortable silence spread around both girls on either end of the phone for another couple of minutes.

"Hey," Paige finally said gently, easing them both back into something she'd been worried she might have lost.

"Hi," Emily said back. "I missed you."

"How's everything at Vallance?"

Emily spent a few minutes filling Paige in on all the going-ons in Solomon, Illinois. She told her about her classes, her fast-approaching birthday, how Charlie and Eden were now dating but how it didn't seem to have changed anything about their dynamic, the Maps she and Jo were working on and why Emily would have to start her's over again. Paige listened, grateful to have someone she could share such easy conversation with.

"So what's going on with you and your Grandma?" Emily asked after she was finished recapping her life.

"Oh, not too much yet, but things are going to start picking up soon, I think," Paige told her. "Tomorrow is my first real day on duty. I'm going to be at the hospital pretty much every day until she's released. Just to keep her company and yell at the doctors and stuff for her."

"Paige?"

"Yeah?"

"I am sorry. About…the things I said. I should have just listened to you before I made any judgements. And, uh, the video, too. Sorry about that." Emily said all of this very carefully. She wasn't sure if she really needed to be sorry for the video, but as long as she was apologizing, she figured she might as well cover all her bases.

"You are quite the handful when you're drunk," Paige laughed. "But it did get us talking again, so I'm glad you did it. It is was fucking hot. So I'm really glad you did it. As for the other stuff…it's okay. I was just feeling kind of attacked on all sides."

"I'm on your side, though," Emily said quietly. "Are we…okay?"

"I'm okay if you are," Paige replied honestly. "But I'm not really sure how this is going to go. I've never taken care of someone like this. I mean, I'm going to have to cook dinner every night and clean the house and take her to all her appointments. I just don't know what my schedule is going to be like…"

Paige by no means wanted to end things with Emily, but she also wasn't sure how they were supposed to continue given her new situation. Paige suddenly had more responsibility on her shoulders than ever before. Stanford had been stressful and it was a big responsibility keeping her grades up and her swimming times down, but still, she had only been responsible for herself. Now one of the most important people in her life was going to be relying on her, too. That was a first for Paige. She hoped Emily would understand all the unspoken things behind the words she was able to get out.

"We'll just take it one day at a time," Emily assured her. "We'll figure it out. I mean, this was never going to be simple, this thing between us, when we live so far apart. But I really like you, Paige. I want…you."

"I really like you, too," Paige said, smiling. "I'm sorry I blew up on you."

Another silence followed this statement, and Paige let her eyes close again. She could hear the deep ticking of the grandfather clock down in the living room; the house itself groaning as it settled around her for the night. Even the weight of the air in the room was familiar to her, smelling like a mixture of lemon drops, moth balls, and laundry detergent. All this combined with Emily's presence was lulling Paige to sleep.

"I should probably go to sleep, Em," Paige finally said. "We'll talk again, soon, yeah?"

"Sounds good," Emily said, working hard to keep the sadness from her voice. She wanted to stay on the line with Paige for the rest of the night, even if neither of them were saying anything. "Sweet dreams, Paige."

"Bye, Em."

* * *

The next few days seemed to crawl by. Emily felt like she was engaged in some cruel game of tug-of-war and the only way to make the time pass at all was to grab it and pull until another hour had passed. It was taking all her strength. It seemed like every time she called Paige, the girl was busy. She was at the hospital or at the grocery store or raking leaves or going to the bank. The two had enjoyed a fun couple hours over text 2 days after they'd had phone sex, though. Paige had been cleaning out the fridge and cupboards and sent Emily pictures of the weird leftovers and canned goods she found and Emily tried to guess what they were (or had once been). But other than that, the contact between them hadn't been very substantial; just a few texts here and there and a short conversation one night.

Tuck had been avoiding The Log since everything had happened with Paige and the twins had shouted homophobic slurs at one another. Or rather, he'd been avoiding Emily. He'd been coming over, but spending all of his time upstairs with one of the other girls. Emily only knew he'd been there if she saw him leave or one of the girls mentioned something he'd said to them. Although Paige hadn't told her as much, Emily knew that things being off between the she and Tuck must be bothering her. Though, Emily suspected both Paige and Tuck were too stubborn about this particular situation to make the first step towards making amends with each other. Emily was fed up with the pair of them, to be honest, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

When she got up on Friday morning, Emily found Eden in the kitchen pouring herself a bowl of cereal.

"Hey, Edie," Emily said slyly. "Things with Tuck have been kind of horrible lately. I really miss him…"

"God, tell me about it," Eden said, heading into the dining room with her cereal and sitting down. "Whenever we bring you up he just says that you're 'sleeping with the enemy.'"

"I told him phone sex doesn't count, but he said it's the principle of the matter, not the act itself," Charlie said from where she was already seated at the dining room table. She was digging in her back pack as she spoke and finally emerged from her search with a king-size pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups clutched in her hand and a victorious look on her face.

Eden stared at Charlie for a moment, then rolled her eyes and snatched the candy from her. "Are you kidding me?" she said incredulously, holding up the orange package.

"What?" Charlie asked in a high pitched tone.

"You can't eat this for breakfast!" Eden spat at her.

"Why not? It has peanut butter in it! Peanut butter is a breakfast food. You can put it on toast and stuff."

"No," Eden replied simply and pushed her own bowl of Rice Krispies in front of Charlie and went back into the kitchen to get another bowl for herself.

Charlie scowled at her retreating form but took a bite of the cereal nonetheless, at which point Emily let out a loud cough that sounded a lot like "whipped," and Charlie flipped her off. When Eden had returned to the table, Emily sat down, too.

"So I have this plan, to make Tuck talk to Paige so we can get everything back to normal again," Emily explained. "It involves some lying and deception and trapping him in the upstairs portion of the house. Will you guys help me?"

Charlie said, "Sure," at the same that Eden said, "What do you mean trapping him?"

"I'll explain that part later," Emily said, brushing Eden's comment aside. "Charlie, will you just ask him to come over and drink with you tonight? We've still got a bottle of that peppermint schnapps he likes. Tell him you wanna play strip poker or something."

Charlie's face perked up at this idea. "Can we actually play strip poker?"

"I don't care," Emily answered. "You just have to keep him busy for an hour or two and get him drunk enough that…well… just get him a little drunk, okay?"

Charlie said, "OKAY!" at the same time that Eden said, "This is starting to sound a little illegal!"

"It's not illegal, Eden, don't be ridiculous," Emily huffed. "Just make sure you're here tonight when Tuck comes over. Where's Jo? I need her help, too."

"She already left," Charlie mumbled through a spoonful of Rice Krispies. "I think she was meeting someone for breakfast."

"Damn," Emily said getting up. "I'll just hunt her down at the theater later, I guess. I'll see you guys tonight. Have Tuck come over at like, 7, okay?"

Charlie nodded as Emily grabbed her jacket and bag and headed out for the day.

* * *

After classes that afternoon, Emily walked over to the theater building and headed backstage. A couple of guys running lines with each other pointed her in the direction of green room where they'd last seen Jo. A group of students in the green room pointed Emily to the props closet, which was not so much a closet as an enormous room piled high with every piece of furniture, object, and knick-knack a person could imagine. Emily went in, edging past a teetering stack of rolled up area rugs, and slowly began to wind her way through the various sections of props. There were 6 shelves of table lamps, followed by standing lamps, then old, empty bottles of every type of alcohol known to man, then dishes and cutlery, candlesticks, and an old beanbag chair was sitting beside a pool table that was leaned on its side. Eventually, following the sound of voices, Emily found Jo standing in front of a strange assortment of broken instruments with another girl. They looked like they were trying to restring a guitar.

"Hey, Josephine," Emily said and laughed when Jo cringed at the sound of her full name.

"Emily," she said without turning around, though she did let out an exasperated sigh. "What are doing in here?"

"Oooh, Clue!" Emily said, getting distracted by the stack of board games on the wall opposite of the instruments. She grabbed the box from the shelf. "I haven't played this in years!"

"Unfortunately, most of those are just the boxes," the other girl said to her as Emily opened the box and her shoulders slumped disappointedly at its lack of contents. "But I have it, at my apartment. If you want to play sometime."

Emily looked up at the girl as she said this and quickly realized the trap she had just inadvertently walked into. The girl was very pretty and slightly shorter than Emily. She had shoulder length tightly curled, brown hair and bright green eyes that were staring at her very intently. She looked very pleased indeed that Emily Fields had just stumbled into her midst.

"Em, you remember Liz, right?" Jo said from behind Liz's back, giving Emily a raised eyebrow, and slightly shake of the head. Jo's expression very clearly said to Emily, "You never listen to me, do you?"

"Oh," Emily said with a forced sort of smile stuttering to life on her face. "Liz! Don…Donovan right? Yeah, of course I remember you." Emily quickly stuffed the empty Clue box back onto the shelf.

"I just needed a quick word with Jo," she said apologetically to Liz, who seemed overjoyed that Emily even knew her last name. "'Scuse me," Emily muttered as she turned her back to the girl.

"What?" Jo asked tersely, while her eyes told Emily, "You're on your own, genius."

"I need your help with something tonight, around 7," Emily said, lowering her voice a little in the hopes that Liz would busy herself with the guitar again and give she and Jo some privacy. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw her crouch down by the instrument again and was glad that Liz was, at least, polite even if she did seem overly keen.

"Yeah, I'll probably be home before then. I mean, it's Friday night," Jo told her. "What do you need help with?"

In spite of herself, Jo's curiosity had been piqued by Emily coming to find her like this. Whatever Emily wanted to do must be important if she was going out of her way to make sure Jo would be home to help her.

"I'm going to…well, I'm going to try to fix the Tuck situation," Emily revealed, then scanned the room quickly after an idea popped into her head. "Actually, is there any rope in here that we could borrow? We might need it…"

Liz eagerly jumped up from where she was fiddling with the guitar, and said, "Yeah, we have rope! It's right over here." Then she put her hand on Emily's elbow and steered her down the aisle toward a corner where Emily could now see piles of rope coiled on the ground.

Emily glanced over her shoulder as she was whisked away by Liz and was happy to see that Jo was following close behind them.

"Use as much as you want," Liz told her, smiling widely, and gesturing at the vast amount of rope in front of them. "And then just, let me know when you want to return it. I can let you in. I have the keys."

"Thanks," Emily said, slightly disarmed by the girl's helpfulness.

"Emily, _dear_," Jo said from behind her, her voice sounding like she was on the brink of laughter. "Why would we need rope to get Tuck to talk to his sister?"

"It's more of a precaution than a necessity," Emily answered her friend, a guilty smile turning the corners of her mouth up as she turned back at Jo. "Do you think that you, me, and Eden could lift the couch together?"

"I could help you, if you're moving some furniture," Liz spoke up again with an eager look on her face.

"Oh, gosh, that is…so nice of you to offer," Emily said, running her hand through her hair nervously. "But this is kind of a…"

"Family thing," Jo finished for her, her arms crossed in front of her chest and a lopsided grin on her face. "You know how awkward hostage situations can get for outsiders."

Emily elbowed her in the stomach. She didn't do it too hard, but hard enough that Jo made a small "oof" noise as Emily bent down and grabbed a length of rope.

"Thanks for your help, Liz," Emily said politely, then turned to Jo and said, "See you at home, _honey_."

* * *

At 7 pm, Tuck showed up and headed upstairs to drink with Charlie, just like they had planned. Emily had the others wait 15 minutes, until they heard Charlie turn on Florence + The Machine very loudly before they sprang into action, having explained to them what they were going to do before Tuck had arrived. While Charlie set to work, getting Theodore McCullers nice and inebriated (and slightly naked), Emily, Jo, and Eden, began, as silently as possible, to move every bit of furniture that they could onto the stairs.

They started with the sectional, pulling the two halves apart, and moved the couch very slowly and painstakingly up to the very top of the stair case. It was a fairly narrow staircase and the couch was almost the exact width of the stairs. Jo, as the strongest of the three, had been alone lifting the higher end of the couch while the other two lifted together from the bottom of the stairs. As the girls gently set the couch down at the top of the stairs, however, Jo realized she was now trapped upstairs on her own.

"Now what?!" Jo hissed at Emily in a low whisper.

"Just climb over to the bannister and come down carefully," Emily whispered back.

"What do mean, 'come down carefully?!'" Jo said angrily.

"You're telling me that super dyke never slid down a fucking staircase railing as a kid?" Emily shot back at her.

"Did you just call me 'super dyke?'" Jo snarled.

"What are you gonna do about it? Huh?" Emily goaded her friend, holding her arms out. "Come on!"

"Fine!" Jo spat down at Emily. The two had perfected the whisper-shout in the past few minutes.

With that, Jo climbed awkwardly onto the railing by throwing her right leg over and around the couch and then grabbing the railing and sort of rolling sideways on it for a moment so as not to leave her left leg behind. Then she slowly inched her way down to the bottom of the stairs again.

"I hate you," she told Emily as she climbed off the railing and picked out the wedgie that had formed on her way down.

"What's going to stop Tuck from doing the same thing, though?" Eden broke in before the two could start fighting again.

"Charlie is getting him drunk for a reason," Emily explained. "And if by some miracle he does make it down here, that's what the rope is for."

"This better be worth it," Eden told her as they moved into the living room to pick up the second half of the sectional. "He and Paige better make up."

"What else do you have to be doing right now, Eden, honestly?"

"Nothing since you have trapped my girlfriend upstairs and encouraged her to strip down with a drunk boy!"

"1, 2, 3!" Jo counted off as they hoisted the second half of the couch together and moved it slowly through the doorway.

"He's gay! And like negative 10 on the threat scale, and you know it. Now both of you stop complaining!" Emily said in a labored whisper as the began walking the couch up the stairs.

"I don't think so," Jo said stopping, looking pointedly at Emily, "you're on the top half this time."

"Fine," Emily huffed, as the set the couch down. "Switch me places."

Once the second half of the sectional was wedged in between the first and wall at the bottom of the stairs, Emily slid gracefully down its leather surface to rejoin her friends, both of them looking none to pleased with her.

"Paige has made you crazy," Jo told her. "I hope you know that."

"Believe me," Emily responded. "You're preaching to the choir."

An hour later, the three girls stood back and admired their work. They had piled nearly every piece of furniture they could get find on top of the couches - chairs, end tables, and lamps. Then they'd stuck spare pairs of shoes and some of the pots and pans from the kitchen into the odd spaces that were still left around the couches. They'd even employed some board games and DVDs in their cases until there was literally not an inch of space that a body could possibly find to make their way down the stairs.

"What am I doing with my life?" Eden whispered in an awed tone as they looked at the impasse they'd just built.

"_Killing it_," Emily said with relish.

"Now what?" Jo said, her eyes wide, staring at most of their house now crammed onto the stairs in front of her.

"You guys wanna make a Funfetti cake? I grabbed a box at the store last week," Emily suggested.

"Oooh, yeah!" Eden replied, grabbing the 9x12 baking pan from where it was wedged between a dining room chair and the lamp from the side table in the living room. "I'll preheat the oven!"

* * *

It was around 9 o'clock. The cake was cooling on the counter in the kitchen, waiting to be frosted. It was a lovely fall evening. Eden had lit some candles in the dining room and opened the window because she'd wanted to smell the crisp, autumn air, so they'd all put some cozy sweaters on to compensate. The three girls were sitting around the table, discussing Emily's birthday again and sipping on wine, when they heard the door open above them. For a moment Tuck was laughing loudly at something Charlie had said, but then the laughter stopped abruptly. There was a few moments of silence. And then,

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME, FIELDS!" Tuck's deep voice shouted from the top of the stairs in the next room.

"That's my cue," Emily said cheerfully as she stood up and walked into the entry. She looked up at Tuck, his eyes slightly unfocused as he stared back down at her furiously. He was clearly drunk, gripping the tiny bit of the bannister that wasn't blocked for some support.

"Oh hey, Tuck!" Emily called up to him brightly. "I didn't know you were here!"


	37. Chapter 37: Spice Girls Shit

"Are you serious right now?" Tuck asked in fierce whisper.

"You're lucky I'm being this nice with how you've been acting lately," Emily tossed back at him, hands propped on her hips fiercely. "How dare you ignore me just because you're upset with Paige! We're _friends_ Tuck."

"This is utter bullshit!" Tuck said, gesturing wildly at the pile of furniture covering the stairs.

"It's an art installation, actually. I've just decided. Yep," Emily told him, crossing her arms firmly over her chest, feeling incredibly sassy. "It's a representation of your behavior lately. And its official name is now Utter Bullshit."

"You don't have to be a snarky bitch about it," Tuck said more quietly, but obviously still fuming.

At that moment, Charlie wandered out onto the landing, stumbling slightly. "What in the world is all of_ this_!" she shouted in mock surprise.

"Oh shut up!" Tuck yelled at her. "I know you were in on this. All of you planned all of this together!" Tuck pointed an accusing finger at each of the girls in turn as he said this.

"You're right," Charlie said and slumped onto the banister of the upstairs landing, her head and arms resting on the railing, and stared longingly down at her three friends below her. "I miss you guys!" she shouted down to them, very drunkenly and very loudly, reaching her hand down towards them. "I wanna be down there now! On the winning side." As she said this she looked over at Tuck and started laughing.

"As soon as Tuck agrees he was the one being the bitch and apologizes to me," Emily began, explaining the terms of Tuck's release, "_and_ he calls Paige to work things out with her, we'll remove everything and you can both come down."

"She put you up to this didn't she?" Tuck said, obviously referring to Paige. "I should have known you were doing this for her!"

"Nope," Emily replied honestly. "Paige doesn't know anything about this. I planned this just for you."

"Screw this!" Charlie shouted and disappeared back into her room.

"That's probably not good," Eden said to no one in particular about Charlie's disappearance. "Charlotte gets very impatient when she's drunk. You should probably hurry this along, Em."

"Right you are, Eden," Emily replied in a business-like tone. "Well?" Emily looked up at Tuck again, and raised her eyebrows expectantly at him.

Tuck heaved a deep sigh and drug his hands over his face and through his hair a few times. "All the seats in the auditorium," he said finally, staring directly at Emily, "and she had to sit next to _you_."

"Fate's a bitch and so am I," Emily smiled proudly at Tuck's reference to her and Paige's serendipitous first meeting. "Your move, Theodore."

"Alright!" Tuck said after the two stared each other down for a few silent moments. "I will admit that I didn't really have a good reason to be avoiding _you_, BUT, there is no way I'm going to call Paige."

"Tuck, come on!" Emily pleaded, her facade breaking finally. "Paige is—"

Emily was abruptly cut off though, because the front door had just burst open behind her. It was Charlie, limping slightly, but with the most triumphant look on her face that Emily had ever seen.

"Suck it, McCullers!" Charlie yelled, with a maniacal gleam in her eyes, as she crossed the threshold, slamming her hands into her pelvis in an obscene gesture.

"How the hell did you do that?!" Tuck yelled down at Charlie.

Jo ran outside, probably to see if there was a ladder or something propped against the house, but found nothing that would have aided in her descent.

"Seriously, Charlie, how did you get down here?" Jo asked from the front yard.

"I climbed off the roof," she said, looking smug as hell. "This is some Spice Girls shit right here!"

"What?" Tuck said, but Eden's shouting, "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!" mostly drowned it out.

Charlie did a happy little jig and then grabbed Eden's face in both of her hands and planted a sloppy kiss on her lips. Then shouted "GIRL POWER!"

"Will you corral her, please?" Emily said to Eden.

"You are a special brand of idiot, you know that?" Eden muttered, shoving Charlie in towards the dining room.

"You love me," Charlie said happily as the two disappeared into the next room.

"I can't believe she jumped off the roof!" Tuck said, and stumbled off into Charlie's room.

"Goddamit!" Emily said, wrenching the front door open again. "Jo! Grab the rope!" she shouted as she ran out into the front yard.

Tuck's head was sticking out of the open window and he was looking around at the overhang of roof where he had once sat with Emily. He hoisted himself out of the window and climbed tentatively on his hands and knees a couple feet out onto the roof. Jo trotted out and stood beside Emily.

"I don't know _how_ something so well thought out has ended up going so wrong," Jo said sarcastically glancing sideways at Emily with her lips pursed.

"Everything is fine," Emily spat back. "I just need to talk Tuck off the roof."

"Tuck," Emily said loudly, "do I really need to remind you how scared of heights you are?"

"I've been out here before," he threw back at her, but he looked increasingly terrified and like he might puke the closer he got to the edge of the roof.

"Yes," Emily told him, "but you didn't jump off! Just go back inside and we can talk."

Tuck rolled, looking like he'd given up, rolled onto his back and lay spread-eagle in the middle of the slanted roof. "Why was I cursed with a twin?!" he shouted into the sky in a forlorn, melodramatic tone. "Why did she have to be gay?!"

Tuck reached into his jacket pocket then and pulled out his phone. "Fuck you, Paige!" he shouted as he pressed call.

* * *

Paige had just finished putting the clean dishes away from the dishwasher. She was exhausted. No one had told her that being a grown up was this much work. Most people, though, Paige reminded herself, went from college to a small apartment, not a fully functioning house they had to take care of while also spending most of their time in the geriatric ward of the hospital.

Paige's days had consisted of her waking up around 8 am, showering, eating breakfast and then going to the hospital to be with Grandma Hazel. The two had no trouble keeping each other company. They played cards and talked about the state of the world. Other times they read the paper or books together in silence, or Paige attempted to help her grandma do the crossword. She rarely knew any of the answers, but she was pretty good at the sudoku. At 11 am, Paige would help her grandma into her wheelchair and they would go on a walk around the hospital together. Hazel had asked Paige after the first day they did this if she would bake some cookies to hand out the doctors and nurses that worked in her wing. Paige couldn't say no, so she'd been baking a batch of cookies almost every night since.

After lunch, Paige would usually go home for a while to run errands and then eventually, make herself dinner and eat before she went back to the hospital around 6 pm. She and Hazel watched Jeopardy together at 6:30 and then went on another walk, wandering around the giant building for an hour or so. Paige didn't like the idea of her grandma being cooped up in the little hospital room, so she insisted that they get out and about at least twice a day.

Tonight, Paige had gotten home around 8:30 and then baked some snicker doodles and peanut butter cookies. Her clothes had some smudges of flour on them here and there and her hair was falling out of its messy bun. She couldn't wait to put her pajamas on and climb into bed. She thought fleetingly of calling Emily, but then she remembered it was Friday night and Emily was probably out at a party or drinking with her friends at the house. As Paige started to climb the stairs, however, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and was genuinely surprised to see that Tuck was calling her.

"Are you done being angry at me, then?" she said as a greeting.

"I have a riddle for you," Tuck said, nearly shouting, which caused Paige to pause on the stairs and pull the phone away from her ear. "What's mean…stupid…and trying to make me jump off the roof?!"

"Um…I don't get it," Paige replied, genuinely confused.

"Your mean stupid Emily is the answer!" Tuck said angrily.

"Are you drunk?" Paige asked. It was a rare occasion when Paige actually had the higher moral ground between the two of them and she was going to use Tuck's debauched state against him if she got the chance.

"I was set up is what I am!" Tuck yelled again. Paige could also hear someone's voice in the background saying something like "_go back" _but it was hard to tell. They sounded sort of far away.

"Okay…where are you, Tuck?" Paige decided she needed to get a better handle on what was actually happening before she started in on guilt tripping her brother.

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times," Tuck sighed. "I am reclining on the roof of The Monologue Cabin."

"_Why_ are you on the roof?"

"I was so happy it was Friday. I was singing in the shower. And then Charlie says, 'Come over! We'll drink the peppermint schnapps!' and that seemed really nice, so I did that. And we played strip poker and I actually got her socks off! But little did I know, what was happening outside. In the downstairs! Betrayal! And when I went to leave, they were being the Spice Girls and the stairs were full of shit!"

"Well, that sounds….horrible…." Paige replied, stifling her laugh. Obviously, Tuck was very drunk and very upset. And on the roof for some reason. It didn't sound like a good combination. She decided to tread carefully so as not to make the situation any worse in case Tuck decided to do something stupid.

* * *

Meanwhile, Emily had gone back inside the house, leaving Jo in the yard to keep an eye on Tuck while she started clearing things off the stairs again.

As Emily skidded into the dining room returning a chair and lamp to their rightful place, she saw that Charlie had Eden pressed up against the fridge in the kitchen, oblivious to everything that was going on outside.

"Will you two stop making out and help me clear the stairs!?" she yelled at them as she headed back into the entry and grabbed more objects at random from the staircase.

"You're such a vag block, Fields," Charlie said as she and Eden appeared at Emily's side and began picking things up as well.

* * *

Paige was listening to Tuck go on and on about which of them was which Spice Girl when her phone buzzed with an incoming text message from Jo. All it said was, "Please encourage Tuck to go back inside the house."

"No, that doesn't make sense, though," Tuck was saying when Paige turned her attention back to him. "You're Ginger, duh. But I think Eden would have to be Scary Spice. Let's face it, that girl can be pretty frightening. And Emily is Posh. And Charlie is Sporty Spice, I guess. But that just leaves Jo for Baby Spice and that just doesn't work. Even if she is blonde."

"You are right about that," Paige said, placating her brother rather obviously, but he didn't seem to notice in his drunken haze. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course you can! We shared a womb, didn't we?" Tuck answered.

"I really want to keep talking to you," Paige began, "but I'd feel a lot better about it if you got off the roof and went back inside. I'm worried you'll fall off."

"Okay…." Tuck said, in a exasperated tone. "But I am a dancer, you know."

"I know. A damn good one," Paige replied, unsure what that had to do with Tuck being on the roof, but deciding to just humor him.

"Hold on, I'm going to climb in the window now," Tuck said. For a couple minutes, all Paige heard was the odd shuffle or bump, and then there was a loud crash.

"Tuck?!" Paige called. "Are you okay?"

"Ouch," he replied groaning. "Ooh. A bed. That looks comfy."

"Yeah, why don't lay down and we can talk, okay?" Paige said, relieved he had fallen _in _the window and not _out. _"So are you still mad at me about leaving Stanford?"

"Well, yes," Tuck said collapsing onto Charlie's wrinkled comforter. "But just because I don't want you to hate your life."

Paige was actually thankful that she got to have this conversation with a drunk Tuck. He was much more dramatic, but also more honest and he didn't call her as many names, which was big plus.

"I wasn't happy at Stanford, Tuck," she said gently, stretching her legs out onto the stair below her, where she'd sat down nearly 15 minutes ago. "I know that's hard for you to get, because I hid the truth from you for so long. But Stanford was the wrong choice for me. Coming home is the right choice. It's not like my life is ending. I'm just going to finish college here instead of in California."

"I just know how miserable I'd be if I had to move home," Tuck said. "God, it would suck so hard."

"But I'm not you, and I didn't _have to,_" Paige said. "You've gotta start trusting me. We have to let each other do our own things now, you know?"

"It's hard when I love you so much, Paigey, and you're so stupid sometimes," Tuck mumbled. "But I'll try."

"Thanks, Theodore," Paige said laughing lightly.

"Don't call me that," Tuck told her. "It sounds gross when you call me that."

Soon the only thing Paige could hear was the soft snores of her brother, and it was like a salve on her aching limbs, soothing the deepest parts of her. It was a different kind of peacefulness— older and surer— than the one she felt when she talked to Emily. She sat there happily and listened to him sleep, glad that things were back to normal; sure that one of the girls would find him soon.

* * *

Once Tuck had successfully crashed back into Charlie's room, Jo had gone back inside and helped the other girls return of all the furniture to where it belonged in the house. With the four of them working together, it only took about 20 minutes more for them to have the stairs completely cleared. As soon as they'd set the last half of the sectional back in to place, Emily ran up the stairs to check on Tuck and make sure nothing too bad had happened to him during the whole roof ordeal.

She found Tuck fast asleep on top of Charlie's bed, snoring, with his phone held loosely in his hand. The knees of his pants were a little scuffed up, but other than that he seemed fine. Emily narrowed her eyes at the phone curiously though, then put it to her ear tentatively, to see if Paige had stayed on the line.

"Baby?" Emily said.

"I knew you'd find me," Paige said quietly from the other end of the line.

"Did you and Tuck work things out?" Emily asked hopefully.

"We did," Paige answered. "I just hope he remembers it in the morning."

"Oh thank god," Emily said sighing. "The girls would have been so pissed if that was all for nothing."

"What exactly did you do?" Paige asked. "Tuck wasn't really making much sense when he explained the situation to me."

"How about this," Emily said, "I'll hang up Tuck's phone so I can leave it here with him and then I'll go down to my room and call you back from my phone."

"Mmm, that sounds good," Paige responded, groaning slightly as she stood up. "I'll put my pajamas on and meet you in bed."

The statement made Emily's heart flutter. She knew it was silly to get excited when Paige was 900 miles away and wouldn't really being meeting her in bed, but she didn't care. She just wanted to be with Paige so badly and this was how they could be together for now, so the words made her giddy. Just knowing Paige wanted her made her happy.

"Bye for a bit," Emily said as she hung up Tuck's phone and placed it gingerly back into his open palm. She kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "Sorry, Tuck," then turned out the light on her way downstairs, glad that Charlie wouldn't be upset that she had to sleep in Eden's bed.

5 minutes later, settled into her own bed in the basement, she called Paige back again and set in telling her what she had done that night in order to make Tuck call her.

"Wait, wait…"Paige interrupted her a few minutes into her story, "why didn't you just confront him and talk to him instead of planning this big stunt?"

"Well…that wouldn't have been very fun, would it?" Emily said, examining her motivations on the matter for the first time. "I've really been missing you lately. It was nice to have something to do to keep my mind off of you for the day."

Paige's heart broke a little when Emily said this and she made a silent promise to herself that she would work harder at trying to find the time to call and Skype with Emily, even though she had no idea when she was going to squeeze it in. She was already exhausted every day by the time she dropped into bed.

"God, you are so fucking sweet it hurts," Paige told Emily. "I'm sorry that being with me isn't exactly a walk in the park."

"It's okay," Emily smiled into the phone. "You're worth it. But back to my story—so Charlie lured him over with the promise of alcohol and whatever else it is that Charlie promises people, and while they were up in her room, me and Eden and Jo moved the couch and a bunch of other furniture and stuff onto the stairs. Seriously, there was not an inch of space left on the stairs. Oh my god, Paige. It was hilarious. You should have seen him! He was so pissed. God, if he'd been able to reach me he probably would've strangled me. I mean, looking back on it, Charlie probably shouldn't have gotten him drunk. I wasn't really thinking about him being with it enough to talk to you. I just wanted to prevent his escape."

Paige was laughing loudly by this point. "I can't believe you did all that! So how did he end up on the roof then?"

"Oh, jeez, well," Emily sighed, "Charlie was stuck upstairs with him, obviously, but she really didn't like that and she was fucking plastered, too, so she went out and jumped off the fucking roof, somehow, god, I don't even know how she did that. So the rest of us were talking and then she just burst in the front door in the middle of the argument! Eden nearly had a heart attack."

"I wish I could have seen that," Paige chuckled appreciatively, imaging the scene in her head. "I can't believe you did all of this just to get Tuck to talk to me. You're amazing, Emily. And also a little crazy, but I like it."

"Yeah, you make me a little crazy, I guess," Emily replied smiling at Paige's compliment, wishing she could kiss the girl. "I know how important Tuck is to you. I just wanted to help. Even if it was…an unconventional way."

Paige shook her head in disbelief. She had no idea how she'd ended up with someone as wonderful and passionate as Emily Fields. Her emotion towards the other girl flared up in her heart and before she could stop herself, the words had tumbled out of her mouth.

"I love you, Em."

There was silence for a few moments on the other end of the line. Emily had stopped breathing she was so shocked by the unexpected admission. Her heart was pounding madly in her chest. She could hardly believe Paige had just said that to her.

"You…you do?" she finally whispered.

"Don't sound so surprised," Paige laughed, her nerves sending the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy.

"Paige…" Emily choked out, her throat suddenly very dry. "I love you, too."

Paige let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and said, "Well, it's settled then. Posh and Ginger Spice ride off into the sunset together. Or wait…were you Sporty Spice?"

"What the fuck are even talking about, McCullers?" Emily asked, laughing loudly, a grin spreading over her face. She was happier than she'd been in weeks.


End file.
